I watched the mental image while sipping the remaining Hundred-Flower Red. Then, at the very end, I saw the final great spell the Grand Master had cast just before her death and murmured.

“Wow. You really were special. No wonder you were arrogant.”

“Ah...”

“So the bottomless pit wasn't hell? It was heaven. This land vanished when it became the bottomless pit, and no one could find it anymore. Thanks to that, you finally returned to your original calling and buried three hundred thousand people.”

“Aaah...”

“But I suppose you couldn't ignore all the resentment of those three hundred thousand prisoners? So you put the question you couldn't answer into a keepsake. Good grief.”

Earth's Ripple had yet to be drawn. It was neither sword nor staff, merely a pitch-black rod. With its form still undetermined, Earth's Ripple was both the key to this mental image and the problem posed by this question.

But I was a mind reader, and an honor student who had always ranked first in secondary school. Reading the answer without solving the problem was child's play.

“Quite an elaborate backstory for a survey.”

Not that there was a right answer. When you got down to it, this was a survey the Grand Master had put together with the sword of the earth, Earth's Ripple, offered as a complimentary gift.

The question itself was so subjective that Earth's Ripple wouldn't grant its power unless you thoroughly convinced the mental image.

Well, that had nothing to do with me.

Having read her intent, I lifted Earth's Ripple. A pitch-black, unadorned rod that might have been a sword or a staff.

The sword of the earth possessed the authority of the earth arts, yet would become the most vicious of weapons if wielded against people.

“Ah, aaah...”

“Hard to tell from the design whether it's a staff or a sword.”

“Why, why...”

The Grand Master sobbed as though I'd exposed her shame. Or, more precisely, the Grand Master's mental image did.

The image despaired as she watched me tear up the survey she'd painstakingly prepared, fiddle freely with the complimentary gift, and figure out the true intent behind this test.

“Even if those cowardly prophets are the reason you ended up like this, isn't testing the living over a question you couldn't answer yourself crossing a line? Oh, I don't mean you're being presumptuous. You've literally crossed the line between life and death.”

I shrugged at the image, who was still sobbing with her head hanging low.

Even a mental image left in a keepsake was only an echo of the dead. There was no way she would answer me.

I waved Earth's Ripple around as I spoke.

“You're already gone, so I suppose there's no need for goodbyes. I won't see you out. Farewell.”

Just as I was about to turn my consciousness back...

“Was I... the one being tested?”

“Gah! You scared the life out of me!”

The Grand Master's mental image had suddenly spoken to me.

Corpses these days really knew how to give a person a fright. Why wake up and start talking all of a sudden? Could her consciousness from thirteen hundred years ago still be here?

“Is it because we're in the bottomless pit? The corpses and lingering thoughts are all strangely odd. They're far too well preserved, and the thoughts are clear enough for me to read.”

I rubbed my chest to calm my pounding heart, narrowing my eyes at the cross protruding from the Grand Master's abdomen.

“Or is it because of that cross...?”

The Holy See's authority, whose very existence was shrouded in mystery. Perhaps, like a delayed prophecy, it was conveying a question to me across thirteen hundred years.

I stared hard at the cross for a while, but that changed nothing. Deciding not to concern myself with a fruitless pursuit, I focused on the Grand Master.

“Should I treat you as a living person for now, then?”

While I pondered that deeply, the Grand Master's wailing image raised her head.

Eyes clear as a lake, and a single river flowing from them—there was something poignant about them. Her expression revealed sorrow and anguish that transcended time.

Weeping bitterly, the Grand Master's image pleaded with me.

“I could not choose. I kept putting it off, until at last I was driven into a corner. I fled because I did not want to kill anyone with my own hands, only to end up killing myself. Fleeing that place... brought me peace, yet a part of my heart always clung to regret.”

“How many people in this world die without regrets? If you went peacefully, that's enough.”

“Was that... truly permissible? Was I allowed to flee from my sin?”

At the Grand Master's cry, so like a death rattle, I met her eyes and addressed the faint presence of lingering thought I could feel.

“What's wrong with running away? When you're faced with a problem you can't handle, escape is one path you're entitled to take. I don't dislike people who try to run away. In fact, I'm rather fond of them.”

“Is that so...?”

“Except for those who use death as their refuge.”

The image clamped her mouth shut. I knelt before the Grand Master's image and met her eyes.

“Death seems like a good refuge, doesn't it? Somewhere no one can come looking for you, where no one can hold you accountable for your wrongs. Like the most perfect absolution imaginable?”

I couldn't read the image's thoughts. Even my mind reading couldn't cross the barrier of time. Damn it. This blasted authority.

Still, like any ordinary person, I mustered a reasonable amount of empathy and murmured.

“Yes, that's right. There's no afterlife, so how could anyone come after you to hold you accountable? It's easy for you.”

Even the bottomless pit, which actually existed, had taken all this trouble and chaos to reach. What if someone died without leaving a trace at all? That was the ultimate default on a debt.

“But spare a thought for the world you left behind. Imagine going to collect a debt, only to find the debtor is somewhere you can't reach without dying! How would the creditors feel? Who are they supposed to charge for what they couldn't collect?”

Within the image of the highest mountain, I pointed far below. In contrast to this place, the Regressor and the Earth Sage were fighting on the lowest, most distant ground.

They were there, but invisible within this mental image.

“That's why they've followed you all the way to hell. To pick up the debts you put off paying.”

“Ah...”

Foreseeing what would happen, the Grand Master let out a deep lament. It might have been different if she'd vanished without any lingering attachment. But if she'd left a mental image because she wanted to resolve those regrets...

She should have expected this.

I turned the questionnaire around and held it out to her. Now the one being tested, the Grand Master accepted it heavily. I rose, looking down at her.

“Your choice isn't over yet.”

The cluster of lights sparkling in the Regressor's eyes flickered weakly. An instant later...

“Ghh...!”

The Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye vanished, leaving crushing exhaustion in its wake. As the Regressor's strength briefly failed her, collapsing concrete and corpses piled over her. A small grave formed to seal her away.

In the fight itself, the Regressor had held the upper hand. Her relentless attacks had forced the Earth Sage onto the defensive.

But the Earth Sage was even stronger on the defensive. In particular, the vast supply of concrete overhead that she could draw on at will made an enormous difference. Had they been on the surface, with open sky above them, the Regressor could have kept fighting on more even terms, or even maintained her advantage.

Whenever the Earth Sage was about to be cornered, however, she freely hauled down concrete from Tantalus and slammed it into the mountain of corpses. The impacts made it heave and spill.

An avalanche of corpses.

Mountainous though the pile was, it consisted not of solid earth but of dead soldiers' bodies. It couldn't withstand impacts that massive. Positioned farther down, the Regressor spent her energy getting swept up in the avalanches and dodging them.

In the end, her strength gave out before she could reach the Earth Sage.

'... If only I'd blown the whole mountain of corpses away with a storm. If I'd destroyed the Earth Sage's footing...!'

Why had that idea come to her only now, after all her strength was gone?

But regret always came too late, no matter how much of it there was. Now the Regressor could do nothing but groan amid the unpleasant press of corpses.

No, there was one other thing.

She could watch me rise before the Grand Master's remains.

Back in reality, I felt the pungent scent of Hundred-Flower Red sting my nose. The outrageously expensive liquor easily masked even the bloody stench of the corpse mountain, briefly numbing my senses and lifting my spirits.

Ah, wonderful. Now this was liquor.

Exhilarated, I pulled Earth's Ripple free and shouted loud enough to shake the bottomless pit.

“Nobody move! From now on, I'm running this operation!”

Everyone froze. Seeing what I'd done, every last person there stopped in their tracks, mouths agape. It felt as though I'd become a king. Most satisfying.

This overwhelming sense of omnipotence. The thrill of having everyone's attention, of sending them between heaven and hell with my every move.

As I raised Earth's Ripple triumphantly, the Earth Sage, who had buried the Regressor far below, widened her eyes.

“How? An ordinary person, holding the Grand Master's keepsake...?”

“Why are you so surprised by this? Isn't climbing a mountain and picking up a stick you find there less surprising than changing your eye color over and over?”

All I'd done was retrieve a stick planted by a hiker who'd climbed up before me. Aside from the fact that this mountain consisted of three hundred thousand corpses, and that the object at its summit was the Grand Master's keepsake, I was an ordinary hiker you could find anywhere.

But the Earth Sage couldn't accept my argument.

“... Surely that cannot be. Master Hughes. What in the world are you doing?”

“Hunting and gathering! The time-honored practice of picking up things that don't belong to anyone!”

I swung Earth's Ripple. It felt hefty, but it wasn't as difficult to move as I'd expected.

Good. That was enough for me to make my declaration.

“Earth's Ripple is mine now. That means I can do whatever I want with it.”

“You take your jokes too far.”

“I may joke around sometimes, but not at a moment this important! I know there's a time and a place!”

Unbelievable. After voicing my displeasure in a sulky tone, I decided to offer proof that this was no joke.

Holding up the sword that stood on equal footing with the earth itself, I shouted.

“Now, to all the buriers who prepared this stage for us: thank you for your hard work.”

At those words, the corpses in loose-fitting robes all turned to look at me. I gave the few who remained a warm smile.

“The buriers recorded in history. Those who died at the Overlord's hands. Those who became vengeful spirits with a mission, doing nothing but piling corpses for thirteen hundred years.”

When the Grand Master vanished along with three hundred thousand corpses and the bottomless pit appeared in their place, the Overlord assumed she had hidden the bodies and fled. He threw the remaining buriers into the bottomless pit.

This was the Overlord's massacre of the buriers as history knew it.

But they hadn't died. Somehow, at some point during their fall, they reached the bottom of this bottomless pit.

What greeted the buriers was the Grand Master, honoring the departed with her dwindling life, her abdomen pierced through.

Wasn't there a saying that a position makes the person?

Both those who had always admired the Grand Master and those who had merely pretended to be buriers accepted their fate, trapped in the bottomless pit, and honored the souls of three hundred thousand soldiers.

With their bodies before death, and as vengeful spirits afterward.

“I have witnessed and experienced every duty you fulfilled! But a monk cannot shave his own head, and a burier cannot bury their own corpse! Because of your calling, you never received a farewell from the living. So I, an ordinary human, will honor your souls in your stead!”

With that declaration, I raised the Grand Master's keepsake high. The corpses, with only vengeful spirits left inside, followed Earth's Ripple with their eyes.

I raised my voice to all those who had remembered their mission even after death.

“Still among the living, I have come across an ancient grave on my travels. In accordance with the duty of the living, I will offer a modest memorial rite before I leave. You have worked so hard. Rest in peace, all of you.”

Holding Earth's Ripple in both hands, I bowed deeply to them all.

Immediately afterward, the corpses collapsed as one, like kites whose strings had snapped.

They would have found peace even if some other ordinary person had paid their respects instead of me.

All they'd needed was a rite held for them alone.

They had buried each of the three hundred thousand corpses. As buriers who followed Mother Earth's will, they couldn't bring themselves to close their eyes until someone buried them in turn.

When I had closed their eyes and straightened up again, the Earth Sage stood before me. She regarded me with a slightly stiff smile.

“... You have honored the souls of the Grand Master and her followers in my stead.”

“Don't thank me. It's the duty of whoever holds Earth's Ripple.”

At my answer, delivered with a bright smile, the Earth Sage's expression darkened.