Chapter 204: Syncretism
A piano plays in a theater as a girl takes a step with each movement of the keys.
She dances, not paying attention to the audience, approaching the piano in the center of the stage.
The tempo slows dramatically, and near the end of the piece, the man at the piano notices her.
“There you are, Lucia.”
“You’re still good at the piano, sir. That was beautiful.”
“Not good enough. I owe the audience a more beautiful performance.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re all busy with their own business. I don’t know when we would all be here together.”
The man tilted his head as he carefully closed the lid of his keyboard.
They belonged to an organization called Syncretism.
A hybrid, a flower that blooms in chaos.
It was an organization, but most of its members were too individualistic to work well together, but when they did, they were one of the worst criminal groups on the continent, sowing chaos on a continental scale.
The building, tucked away underground, was his personal theater, a hideout of sorts.
“I’ve heard weirder rumors than that.”
“What rumors?”
“The strange rumor that the head of Syncretism is coveting my flowers.”
“Alas, that one.”
“But there’s no head of Syncretism, is there? Or at least not one who looks like one…”
Lucia whirled around in a dance, tilting her head to look at him at the piano.
“…It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Haha, Lucia wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“Pooh, are you trying to invade my territory?”
Lucia, who puffed out her cheeks as if she was impatient, narrowed her eyes.
The man who had been the recipient of her cute questioning stood up with a grin on his face.
“So, Lucia, did you like him?”
“I thought he was just a nice guy at first, but he had something more interesting up his sleeve.”
“You’ve grown to like him?”
“Phew, love is such a hard thing for me to talk about, I just like flowers…that’s not my role, and you haven’t answered my question yet…”
“…I don’t have any plans right now, but he piqued my interest. I’m just waiting for it to blossom.”
“Hmm… I think the flower has already bloomed.”
“It’s going to be a bigger flower than that.”
“It’s beautiful enough as it is.”
“Don’t worry too much. I’m sure Lucia will be happy when it does.”
“What did you see?”
Lucia asks, and the man stroking the piano reminisces.
“…Chunks of scrap metal, demons with crimson horns sprouting from their heads…and I saw him among them. Distrust, despair…and reunion. Soon there will be war, Lucia.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Haha, that’s understandable, but what matters now is that he will be at the center of that war.”
“War…Is my sister safe?”
Lucia’s eyes widened at the word war, and her voice turned serious.
The most important thing to her was the safety of her sister, Rikua.
“Perhaps…?”
The man shrugged, feeling like he’d been caught in the wrong.
“I don’t want to entrust my sister’s life to such a vague answer, so if he dies, maybe there won’t be a war?”
“…Unfortunately, I don’t think so. His presence will only lead the war into chaos. It’s too late to stop the war itself, and if you intend to harm him above all else…”
He snaps his fingers, and everyone in the theater turns to stare at her.
“…I don’t think you can get away with it, can you?”
They were not living human beings.
They were all his puppets, the audience for his show.
The world called him a marionette in a massacre, a cursed puppeteer.
Lucia’s head snapped around at the dense feeling all around her, and she raised her hands in surrender.
“Well, if my sister isn’t in danger… I’m fine, and I’m having enough fun as it is.”
“Good.”
The man snapped his fingers again at Lucia’s reply, and the crowd that had been glaring at her spontaneously erupted into conversation about the performance.
“But if you’re so worried about him, why don’t you just stop the assassins yourself?”
“Ah, that fifty thousand gold…”
Lucia nodded at the man’s muttering.
“He won’t be killed by ordinary assassins, but still, wouldn’t it be dangerous if the ‘Ghost of the Holy Land’ or the ‘Wild Dogs’ were to get involved in this…”
“Well, the Wild Dogs are stupid and greedy for money, so even if they did, I don’t think the Ghost of the Holy Land would get involved.”
“Why?”
“Because I met her once. She doesn’t kill people for money.”
“So the Ghost of the Holy Land was a woman?”
“…That’s all I know.”
The man stroked his own neck and smiled sinisterly.
There was one deep scar on his neck.
It was a scar from his past encounter with the Ghost of the Holy Land.
“A piece of scrap metal and demons…Do you think Mr. Zetto is betraying the humans?”
“I don’t know.”
The man spat out another vague answer, and revealed in the reverberations of the chaos that would ensue.
His role in the puppet show was to incite public opinion to allow the chaos to grow out of control.
The flower he was about to bloom was already so beautiful that it was enough to set the scene.
“I’m going to go now, there are no people… You don’t really work, so you don’t have anything interesting to say, do you?”
“When you put it like that, you make it sound like I’m an idiot, but here I am, working diligently for the best newspaper in the continent.”
Lucia, who was making a “fufu” sound with her mouth, turned away.
“Oh, by the way, did you mention that you’re going to the East this time? Lafert is in the East right now, so if you’re lucky, you might be able to meet him.”
“Lafert…? What does he do there?”
“From what I’ve heard, he’s hanging out with a group of blood mages in the East called the Blood Brotherhood, and they’re preparing for a grand event called the Blood Festival.”
“Hmm…A festival, that sounds interesting.”
Without even turning her head, Lucia says that with a faint smile and leaves the venue.
The man who watched her leave the theater chuckled softly.
He was reminiscing about the first time he met her.
She was pure chaos, unable to fit into the world since she was a child.
What he did was simple.
He’d told her that she wasn’t wrong and that there was beauty in chaos.
Reading people’s minds and using them to one’s advantage was a talent that humans of the Syncretism had, but her method was quite unique among the members of the Syncretism.
Innocence was her weapon and the flowers she blooms are primal and arousing, scented with the essence of humanity.
“She seems to be enjoying herself quite a bit.”
He had never seen Lucia so excited before.
“The Academy is her stage, after all… I’ll mind the outside world.”
His attention was drawn to a piece of paper on the piano that contained information about St. Bernice, the Saint of Innocence.
“The power to separate truth from falsehood…A beautiful tune comes to mind. Was there a warlock among the puppets?”
***
I had been telling Geppeti my reasoning about the Earth God since early morning.
“Chicken and cider…? Why did you wait until now to share such important information…!”
“I thought it was an Easter egg or something…”
After listening to my reasoning, Geppeti gave me a slap on the wrist, and I went with her to the store I had visited with Aizel earlier.
That’s how we met the owner.
“No, the boss is the one lying over there, Mr. Boss, the customer is looking for you!”
Oh no, he wasn’t the owner.
He was in the kitchen cooking, of course, and I thought he was the owner, but apparently he was just an employee.
The employee calls for the boss, and the man lying on the couch with a magazine on his head jumps up.
“What, we have a visitor…?!”
Is he really the boss?
No, I wonder if he’s the God of the Earth.
He was an unremarkable-looking man with an extremely ordinary aura that didn’t feel like a god at all.
“Ho…?”
He spots me and Geppeti, and his eyebrows rise.
“Madler, I think you can call it a day.”
“Yes, sir, but we have customers, and I don’t want to disappoint them by serving them your food.”
“It’s okay, they’re not here for regular food.”
“But…”
“Oh, really… I’ll make sure you get paid, so listen to me…! My authority as boss is diminishing in real time.”
“You don’t have any authority to drop…”
Eventually, the employee named Madler leaves the store.
“Whoa…”
As he hurries away, he dusts off his palm. He sticks out his palm and immediately sets the tone.
“You’ve come to the right place. I’m the one…”
Boom!
He is interrupted by the door opening and Madler entering the shop again.
“…”
He glances at Madler uncomfortably.
“Oh, that’s because I forgot my stuff…”
Madler ducked into the kitchen, grabbed his stuff, and headed back out the door.
“C’mon, I’m the one who…”
He coughed and tried to regain his composure.
“…Never mind. I think you know who I am.”
He didn’t seem to be in the mood, so I decided to let it go.
“Have a seat. You didn’t bring her, by the way, did you?”
“…You mean Sierra?”
I had left Sierra behind.
I’d told her I’d be back in a few minutes with Geppeti and the groceries.
“Well, it’s not something she’ll want to hear. She wouldn’t even know what you were talking about.”
I was thinking the same thing.
As Geppeti and I took our seats, he tapped the table and spoke again.
“Let me formally introduce you to the ‘Earth God’ you’ve been looking for. Well, not really a god or anything anymore.”
“Then what should we call you? There have been many gods on Earth, haven’t there?”
“Call me whatever you want, because all those gods were me.”
“Hmm…”
The gods of various religions came to mind, but I didn’t want to call them anything.
“Loki… What about Loki?”
Geppeti had the same idea, and she suggested it to me.
“Why Loki?”
“It just popped into my head, and I think it’s a similar image…”
“Well, if it’s Loki, is that the guy from Norse mythology? He’s a personal favorite.”
“Then let’s call you Loki.”
“As you wish.”
That was my first encounter with Loki.
Well, maybe not the first meeting, since I had seen him before.
“Well, I like the name, so let’s get straight to the point. The fact that you came to me means that Heneryes told you about me… You’ve noticed that you’re having problems with your awakening, right?”
“Problems?”
Loki tilted his head at the mention of a problem with awakening.
“…If not that, then what?”
“I just came to see you because I think my head has gotten weird.”
“Your head got weird because…?”
“Well, a lot has happened in the last little while, and I was wondering if you could fix it…”
“What happened?”
I explained to Loki what had happened with the girls. The strangeness of their obsession and my feelings for them.
“It has something to do with the crown…”
Loki scratched his head as he listened to my explanation but his next words caught me off guard.
“…That has nothing to do with the crown.”
Loki, who had been casually scratching his ears, said in a firm voice.
“Yeah, but…”
“It’s just your taste, isn’t it?”
“…My taste?”
“In the first place, I looked at your past life, and your taste is the same as it has always been. The bottom line is, you’ve been a weirdo from the beginning.”
I get a clear answer, and Geppeti, sitting next to me, looks at me quizzically.
“So, Lord Zetto, you were like that in your previous life as well…”
“No…”
…Was I?
Now I’m not sure what’s what.
“It’s just an illusion caused by your emotions. Of course, it’s undeniably stimulating, so it might help you regain your emotions… but don’t blame the crown I made for you. It had nothing to do with your ‘strange tastes’.”
I knew my reaction was out of the ordinary, but to say that I only had unusual tastes…? I was at a loss for words.
“…So, you’re saying you have a problem with awakening?”
At times like this, it’s better to change the subject.