'That bit about it being to the west has to be a lie.'
Barbatos leaned on her staff and pressed forward. After tripping three times in a row, she had no choice but to pick up a suitable branch to use instead. But after roughly thirty paces, Barbatos accepted the reality that her body was in tatters and she couldn't push herself any further.
"Haa, hoo… hoooh."
Barbatos collapsed against a tree, sitting down with her head bowed. This was more exhausting than—well, if she exaggerated only slightly—her half-day-plus of hand-to-hand combat with Agares. Come to think of it, it wasn't even an exaggeration. She had at least three or four times less strength than she'd had back then.
'Even though he hates me that much, there's no chance he pointed me toward the actual right location. He factored in that I'd ignore his advice and search in the exact opposite direction—it was a deception built on top of that. The goal was to make me obsessed with the word "west"…'
Barbatos drew a rough map of the continent on the dirt ground with labored, heavy breaths. It was an inexact sketch with only the outlines of each nation scrawled in—but, surprisingly, the locations of the cities were fairly accurate.
'If it's west, that means Franc, Batavia, Venetia, Bretagne, and Castile. Tch. An obnoxiously wide area.'
Barbatos crossed out five of the thirteen nations with an X. Her breathing became a little easier. It might have been her imagination, but at least she felt a measure of relief—she had eliminated nearly a third of the vast continent.
'It wouldn't be the Habsburgs either. Dantalion erased every trace of his existence and vanished because he wanted to disappear. There are far too many memories tied to the Habsburgs. An excess of the elements that define your identity. …That's right, isn't it, Dantalion?'
An X was drawn over both the Habsburg Empire and the Habsburg Republic.
Of the thirteen nations, six remained.
Barbatos stared down at the crude map in silence. Her vision was blurring. Intense fatigue bore down on her. But joy—the joy of having escaped the fate of meeting her end at the execution block and now being able to search for Dantalion—overwhelmed every ounce of her exhaustion.
'It's hard to be certain, but… it wouldn't be Teutonia, Sardinia, or Polittunia either. Too close to the Habsburgs. Somewhere far away. A place where the name Demon Lord Dantalion carried virtually no weight. She must have gone somewhere like that.'
Barbatos crossed out several more nations.
Now only three places remained on the map.
Kalmar Confederation. Kingdom of Moscow. Anatolia Empire.
"……."
Barbatos gazed at the map in silence.
From thirteen nations—down to three.
Just muttering the numbers, it certainly felt few. The problem was the size of the territory. The Anatolia Empire alone was a great power that occupied a full third of the continent. Much of it was desert, but that was precisely why one couldn't let their guard down.
'Dantalion would definitely try to live somewhere barren, like a desert or a snowfield.'
That was Dantalion to a T.
Barbatos rubbed the corner of his eye with conviction. Dried flecks of blood, stuck to his face like scabs, flaked off.
'You've cut every connection you've ever made and gone into seclusion. Social skills. Relationships with people. You threw it all away. And now you'd go back to a place where people throng? Slowly building relationships with new people again?'
Barbatos let out a small laugh. His esophagus, lungs, mouth, and teeth all hurt at once. He was in a state where even a small laugh was hard to bear. And yet the laughter spilled out of Barbatos anyway……
'Absolutely impossible.'
Because Dantalion would be seized by a single thought.
Does he even have any value worth mingling with new people for?
He'd thrown away every connection he'd cherished. Cut them. Severed them. And now, if he met someone new, it would be nothing less than an insult to all those connections he'd abandoned.
'So it's impossible.'
Dantalion would want time itself to stop.
A desert where no more life would grow.
A snowfield where footprints were quickly buried by fresh snowfall.
Denying himself any future and clinging to the present, Dantalion would simply want to go on living, endlessly reminiscing about the past.
'He won't kill himself. There's no way that guy would commit suicide. He'd just live on like a breathing corpse.'
The only concern was Dantalion's condition. Hallucinations and auditory disturbances—how long could his mind hold out? Even without intending it, might he reach a point where he unconsciously yearned for death?
No, he would definitely reach that point.
An ordinary person couldn't endure that loneliness for even a single year. Barbatos knew that Dantalion possessed a mind like a monster's. Ten years. He could probably barely hold on for a hundred. But what about two hundred years? Three hundred. Could he truly endure four hundred?
'Within a hundred years. At the very latest, within two hundred years, I have to find him.'
If two hundred years were exceeded, Dantalion's mind would be destroyed.
Even if he didn't die and remained alive, he would no longer be Dantalion—just something that had once been Dantalion. Barbatos did not want that ending.
'I want to meet Dantalion.'
He wanted to see that fool who was so clever yet so stupid.
He missed that man who was shameless yet endlessly self-reproaching.
That was why the two-hundred-year deadline mattered.
The taboos Ivar Lodbrok had placed on Barbatos were more than one. Among them was the condition that he must find Dantalion alone. Barbatos had no choice but to rely only on his two feet and two hands to search for him.
"……."
At some point, Barbatos was already on his feet.
There was no time to delay. His body felt heavy as a thousand pounds. He knew this—resting properly and setting out in the healthiest condition he could manage would be the wise choice. But no matter how rationally he tried to talk himself into it, he could not stay still.
That day, Barbatos collapsed before he could leave the forest.
When he opened his eyes, a week had passed. Bright midday. Leaves and dirt covered Barbatos's body. A bird brushed against his face in the wind, and Barbatos jolted upright. He didn't know exactly how many days had passed. But upon seeing the number of leaves clinging to his body, Barbatos flew into a rage.
"This worthless body…!"
She stared down at her own palms, trembling.
At the very least, three days had been wasted. Three days! Because of the three days he had just lost, Dantalion might be shattering right now. Barbatos clenched his teeth and hurried to his feet. There was no luxury to waste time. Not even a little.
Just a little faster, toward Dantalion.
Year One.
Barbatos seared her face and lower abdomen with fire. The horns that had already been cut were sliced even shorter, hidden beneath her hair. Now, no one who looked at her would recognize her as Barbatos.
Her face was horribly burned. But this was the best option. This world was not kind enough for a frail young girl to wander around alone. She had made herself so ugly that no one would ever feel the desire to violate her—so grotesque that people would instinctively steer clear.
"She's a leper…."
"No, she's definitely a witch…."
Humans who saw Barbatos's appearance all whispered among themselves. Sometimes stones were hurled at her. They cursed, telling her to get out of their villages and towns. One day, while passing through the Antiochia region of the Anatolia Empire, she took a hard blow to the head from a stone.
A hit she would have scoffed off and shrugged away in the old days. But the moment the stone struck, Barbatos lost consciousness and crumpled to the ground. A day and a half. She lay there, bleeding and unconscious.
"……."
When consciousness returned, Barbatos clicked her tongue lightly. She was irritated. More than the person who threw the stone, she resented herself for being unable to recover her strength for a day and a half. She roughly shook the blood that had soaked into her hair.
"……I'm busy, you know."
She quickened her pace as though nothing had happened.
Faster, if only a little.
Year two.
Barbatos hid her face beneath a deep hood. She never removed the hood even when the height of summer bore down. Sometimes the sweltering heat made her feel faint. She realized that a "normal body" was far more inconvenient than she had imagined.
The one thing she was grateful for was that she still didn't need to eat or sleep. Meals and sleep consumed an enormous amount of time. Not having to worry about those things meant more time to spend searching for Dantalion. She was grateful for that….
Year three.
There were all sorts of lunatics in this world.
Barbatos knew perfectly well that her current appearance was so hideous that even a teenage boy who had been suppressing his sexual urges for three years would instantly shrivel at the sight. And yet there was still a man who attacked her. He was the kind who got aroused by her voice alone, not her appearance.
Ambushed in a dark back alley, Barbatos pretended to comply quietly, merely biding her time for an opportunity. She didn't even scream. The moment the man relaxed and dropped his guard, she pretended to perform fellatio and bit off his genitals.
"GRAAAAGH!"
The man's scream echoed through the alley.
Leaving a grudge behind would be troublesome, so Barbatos stabbed the man's testicles with her self-defense dagger. His screams intensified. Barbatos let out a derisive snort and slit his throat.
"If you want to rape me, at least conquer an empire first. You piece of trash."
She tossed the dagger, now smeared with that filthy blood, onto the ground and leisurely left the alley. From that day on, Barbatos deliberately damaged even her vocal cords. Her beautiful voice turned into a hoarse, unpleasant rasp.
Fifth year.
Seventh year.
Fifteenth year.
From small towns to large cities.
From mountain valleys to the seaside.
Where humans lived and where Goblins dwelled, where Monsters lingered and where spirits wandered. From places so remote no one could survive to the very edges of cliff faces.
Barbatos walked without resting for a single hour. The only times she collapsed were when her body simply could not endure any longer and gave out. It was reckless and foolish. But Barbatos could not let go of that single thought no matter what.
Just a little faster.
Dantalion.
Sixty-second year.
"Damn it. Not here either."
Barbatos drew an X on the parchment map with a pencil.
She let out a sigh. She had searched most of the regions in Anatolia. There were still many unexplored areas, but Barbatos had her own way of distinguishing between places worth searching and those that weren't.
For instance, regions where alcohol was hard to come by were eliminated. Barbatos could not imagine Dantalion living without booze, sober as a stone. That bastard was an alcoholic down to the bone. So places like the middle of a desert or caves in a mountain range were crossed off the list.
"There's also a good chance he's in some island village..."
Ugh, Barbatos scratched her head.
As it happened, musicians were performing in the middle of the city. They were hired by the city as the festival day drew closer. Barbatos watched them with a frown, when a certain thought suddenly struck her.
...Music?
Ah, Barbatos opened her mouth.
Dantalion would certainly be planning to endure for a thousand years, ten thousand years, forever. Surely he would have devised some measure to keep his mind as stable as possible?
The best method would be engaging in social life. But since that was impossible, it was immediately discarded. So, if we set social life aside, what would be the most suitable means to preserve his sanity?
'Hobbies!'
A thundercloud swept through Barbatos's mind.
'He'd pick up some kind of hobby — music, or crafts, painting, anything — and throw himself into it!'
Barbatos broke into a bright smile without even realizing it.
It was the moment the long journey ahead gained its direction.