Chapter 33: A Fanatic’s Logic

Do all fanatics have such a fluctuating mindset?

Bel sighed and placed the switch back in Lema’s hand.

“That’s enough. You’ll really die.”

“…I don’t think so. As my master’s apostle, I can endure that much.”

“Take it.”

Lema didn’t argue a second time and took the whip back.
Then he looked down at Bel with vacant eyes.

The smell of blood was bothering her, so Bel reached for Lema’s thigh.

“…!”

He flinched but meekly accepted Bel’s touch.

Bel, who had healed the wound in an instant, said in an annoyed tone:

“Don’t do this again.”

Bel flopped down on the bed that had been soiled yesterday.
And she patted the space next to her.

“Hoo… Sit.”

“Yes.”

But Lema knelt and sat on the floor.
It seemed to be his own way of saying he would never overstep his bounds.

Looking at him like this, he seemed obedient, but he was a stubborn guy.

Lema’s gaze was fixed on Bel’s thigh the whole time.
It wasn’t a gaze filled with desire.
He looked confused, as if the bruise he had made was still bothering him, and yet he stared at it very seriously.

“I will tell you what you are curious about. You asked if fate is predetermined.”

“…Yes.”

Bel went straight to the point.

Even though he was curious about it, he didn’t ask first.
What’s more, until just a moment ago, he had been only concerned with Bel’s condition, as if that fact was not important.

Anyway, Lema was curious about it.

Whether he was destined to be a heretic from the beginning.
Whether it was predetermined.

So—was it unnecessary to serve Luxlon since childhood and train to become his apostle?
Then did he have no free will after all?

What Lema was curious about was probably something like that.
In a way, it could be unfair.

However, this could not be explained simply.
It also required the premise of some high-level understanding.

After laying out a few explanations in her head, Bel decided to explain it more simply so that Lema could understand it at his level.

“The possibility of you becoming a heretic and not becoming a heretic coexisted. You could have, and you could not have.”

“…Then isn’t it not decided after all?”

“How many possibilities are there?”

“Two… no, that’s not it.”

Lema, who was about to answer without thinking, realized it belatedly.
The future was probably not just determined by whether Lema Valkite was a heretic or not.

If all possibilities coexisted, the direction of the future could not be just one or two.

“Yes. Humans cannot see all those possibilities.”

It was the same principle as humans being unable to count an infinite number of numbers.

“Then in the end… isn’t it not decided?”

Because all of that exists probabilistically.
But in the end, that was also a human perspective.

“For humans, yes. But for a being that can see all of that, it is decided.”

Lema Valkite looked up at her silently.
A sparkling gaze.
As if asking if such a being was the Supreme God.

It was possible to think that observing all of that was the domain of a god.
Bel did not bother to deny it.

“If a human figures out a way to observe it, the act of observing itself becomes an act of interfering with causality.”

“…”

“The act of seeing itself becomes interference.”

“So, in the end, someone who is not a god saw the future in a wrong way, and it was decided like that?”

It is impossible for a human to see the future completely, all the probabilities without damage.
It was simply not physically possible.

Lema pointed to the moon floating in the sky and asked if it existed or not.
If what is visible to the eye does not exist, then what does?

But to match that understanding, humans are beings who are originally unable to open their eyes.
It is the same as a human drawn on a cross-section of paper being unable to perceive the world outside the paper.

A human with closed eyes is a being who originally cannot see the moon.
It’s the same even if a human realizes some method and forcibly opens their eyes.

This time too, they must have realized some method and seen the future.
But even if they see the moon that way, with human understanding, they can only see a cross-section of the moon.

“No matter how infinite the possibilities are, in the end, the moment you observe from a human’s perspective, you can only see one.”

So if it was an act done out of the arrogance of being able to observe everything about the future, or even if it was an act done just by thinking that the future is decided in one direction, any act of an unqualified human trying to see the future could be called a wrong method.

“The moment of observation itself influenced that causality. So, in the end, it means that someone saw the future where I become a heretic, and I became like this.”

“…To put it in words you can understand, yes.”

And in fact, such cases were not entirely unheard of in the long history of humans.
The method of observation was different.
And because of the act of observing, they got an unwanted result.
If it’s because it was a wrong method in the first place, then it could be so.

Bel was a being who left all possibilities open.
She had no intention of calling it a completely wrong guess.

“I see.”

She hadn’t expected such a bland reaction.
Thinking that Lema hadn’t understood properly, Bel tilted her head.

“You still don’t understand?”

“…I understand. No, I probably don’t. It would be my arrogance to try to understand completely.”

Bel nodded.
There was no greater waste of time than agonizing over this.
She had no intention of wrestling with it now, whether Lema understood it or not.

“Whether I am a heretic or not seems to be not a very important issue.”

“Hmm… really?”

“Yes. I don’t know who the prophet is, or what exact future they saw. But if they had just seen the future of me becoming a heretic, they would have killed only me, not destroyed my family.”

Lema lowered his head and seemed to be thinking for a moment.

“But Lucilonia had already designated Valkite as a heretic and intended to purge them. That event contributed to making me doubt the Supreme God Luxlon and meet Lady Belmias.”

They tried to kill Lema because he was scheduled to become a heretic, and in the end, that act became the cause of the surviving Lema Valkite following Belmias with a grudge against the Holy Empire.

In the end, the statement that ‘it became that way because they saw the future‘ was correct.
Because if they hadn’t seen the future, they wouldn’t have purged Valkite in the first place.

She thought that was all he needed to understand, but Lema seemed to have more to say.
He didn’t know exactly what was observation and what was interference.

The purge carried out by Lucilonia was an act that could not have come out if the issue of whether Valkite was a heretic or not was important in itself.
Because the purge itself could create a heretic.

“So, in my opinion… the prophet did not see the short-term future of me becoming a heretic, but must have seen something else further ahead.”

“Uh… really?”

She thought she only needed to teach him one thing, but Lema seemed to have realized one more thing with that short explanation.

“I think it’s not a matter of preventing me from becoming a heretic, but something even worse that had to be killed and eliminated.”

“Even worse?”

“As a foolish person, I cannot know. For example… wouldn’t it be something like the ‘Era of the White Darkness’?”

It was unexpected.
Lema Valkite’s understanding was better than she had thought.

Lema looked up at Belmias silently.
Belmias’s purpose was the destruction of the world.
He had heard it so many times that he knew it.
That was the will of the summoner that Belmias wanted to grant.

Perhaps the worst outcome Lucilonia had seen was the destruction of the world.
Because the being in front of him seemed to be a being that could fully achieve it.

“The Supreme God said she would destroy this world. Did Lucilonia try to kill me because I would contribute to that? Or—”

“…”

“…Was it so that I could reach this place, by my master’s side, only by using such a method?”

Yes, it could be seen that way.
Not to kill and eliminate, but to make Lema be by Bel’s side.

If that was the purpose from the beginning…
Is there meaning to Lema Valkite being here?
Or not?

Valkite is a devout family of holy knights serving Luxlon.
If they were to act by discerning the will of Luxlon, the god of light and justice, it would be right to punish Belmias, who is scheduled to be the source of destruction.

If Lema’s family had not had such a penance, the causality of meeting Belmias would not have been created.
Lucilonia might have created a penance for Lema for this purpose.

Although at this point, all of this is just speculation.
In reality, if that was the purpose, they had succeeded.

What’s more, she had even confirmed it last night.
Lema Valkite could harm the being in front of him.
Perhaps he could even kill and eliminate her.

But—only if Lema Valkite’s faith did not waver even after going through all that.

What was the answer?
Bel answered that question.

“Master, isn’t there great meaning in my meeting you? Couldn’t I play some great role for you?”

“…I don’t know.”

Lema Valkite still seemed to want to think of his situation as something led by some great will of a god.
However, unlike Bel, who was thinking indifferently, Lema was desperately contemplating.

If he was still a knight who followed the will of Luxlon, if he was a true apostle of Luxlon, would he have welcomed such a situation?

Perhaps he would have.
He could have been the only tool that could eliminate the disaster that would come in the future.

However.

But now…

Lema closed his eyes.
He bowed his head.

What came to his mind at the end of all his agony was just a single bruise.
The small bruise that had been on Belmias’s thigh.

Lema, who had been contemplating, said carefully:

“For example, I should have stopped my master from going down to the village last night.”

“…Uh oh. You saw that?”

She thought she had gone out without anyone noticing.