The Great Sinner Meets the Cursed Child

The wicked count Giovanno Ack Toh!

A full year had passed since that great manhunt led by the Fledgling Phoenix Mereucce Runtart, a mere 7 years old...... and by now, there was likely not a single person in the Pokkeroce Kingdom who didn't know that name.

Mothers threatened their children, saying, “If you're naughty, Giovanno will come and snatch you away,” and “Giovanno-esque” had become an idiom used across the Pokkeroce Kingdom to describe anything truly evil.

A great villain the entire nation loathed like snakes and scorpions.

That was the man called Giovanno.

Why was he so hated? First of all, because the crimes he had committed were truly unforgivable.

He had forcibly captured his own impoverished subjects and sold them off as illegal slaves to make money.

At times he had carried out slave hunts that wiped out entire villages, and some said his victims numbered no fewer than a hundred.

On top of that, due to propaganda by nobles of opposing factions, or by having his crimes pinned on him by those who were supposed to be his allies, or perhaps due to “rumors on the wind” concocted by a public with overactive imaginations and loose tongues, he came to be credited with crimes he never even committed, and was enshrined as the mastermind behind every single crime occurring within the country.

Without even knowing it himself, he had become the supreme leader of a secret society that wished for the downfall of the Pokkeroce Kingdom.

When he heard about it during his interrogation in prison, even his trademark sarcasm failed him, and he was struck speechless in spite of himself.

In any case, the perception of him within the Pokkeroce Kingdom was that of ‘the unprecedented great villain’.

No wonder he was to be banished to Zamago Forest, a punishment said to be crueler than death itself.

But no matter how much he was reviled for crimes he hadn't committed, he accepted it all without complaint.

After all, he had without a doubt dirtied his hands with the very illegal slave trade that had led to his capture.

There were countless people whose lives had been ruined because of him.

Back when he was a count, he had been desperate for funds and had forcibly pushed such thoughts out of his mind, but how sinful that was!

And so, whenever he thought of that, no matter how harshly he was blamed, he felt no urge to make excuses.

He had grown completely numb to it somewhere along the way, but there was certainly, undoubtedly, some goodness in his heart too.

This isn't to defend him, but it wasn't as if Giovanno had dealt in illegal slaves because he enjoyed it.

His running of the territory had gone badly, he had been driven into a corner, and the last thing he clung to was the worst crime of all.

To begin with, he had originally been nothing more than the second son of a viscount's house distantly related to the House of Count Toh, a man who, in the Pokkeroce Kingdom, should never in a million years have been granted a count's title.

And yet, thanks to some power play in a dark corner of the royal palace that even Giovanno himself knew nothing about, the then-young Giovanno found himself inheriting Toh County without the faintest idea why.

When he was told of this as a ‘decided matter’ from above, Giovanno was, of course, bewildered.

But he was still young then, and the ambition he kept hidden inside him burned.

Here was his big chance.

From here, he would claw his way to the top, he had thought.

But when he actually took up his post, Toh County's finances were in shambles.

The subjects were already exhausted, the farmland had wasted away, and merchants had begun to flee.

It seemed that due to the thoughtless spending of the previous counts of Toh (who had since vanished, their whereabouts unknown), the once-prosperous land of Toh County had been completely eaten away.

In short, Giovanno had been a sacrifice, used to prolong the life of the dying House of Count Toh for even a little while longer.

Why had they gone so far as to force Giovanno into the title of count, just to keep the House of Count Toh alive?

Who had benefited from doing such a thing?

In the end, Giovanno never found out.

Never knowing, he worked desperately, was driven into a corner, dirtied his hands with crime, made a great many people miserable, and Giovanno was ruined.

Incidentally, after Giovanno was captured, the House of Count Toh was finally abolished, or so it was said.

From the start...... they should have just done that......!!

Hearing that news in prison, Giovanno wept tears of blood.

◇ ◇ ◇

(In the end, what was my life even for......)

Giovanno had stopped in the forest and, without realizing it, sunk deep into thought, when a single raindrop fell on his cheek.

Startled, he looked at his hand and saw that he was holding a squishy, purple fruit.

Having wandered aimlessly through Zamago Forest, he had found this purple fruit, and while gazing at it, he had fallen deep into thought about his life up until now, and how he should conduct himself from here on.

“............”

Giovanno looked at the purple fruit in his hand once more.

This fruit, which resembled an eggplant, was called donei.

It was a climbing plant that grew in the forests around the Pokkeroce Kingdom, and it was sweet.

“Ha! How shamelessly greedy of me, if I do say so myself!”

Giovanno laughed at himself, tossed the fruit away, and started walking again.

The donei is said to be a sweet, delicious fruit.

It is also a deadly poisonous fruit: one bite, and a person is certain to die within minutes.

◇ ◇ ◇

The rain began to intensify.

The raindrops, which until a moment ago had only pattered against the leaves overhead, grew steadily heavier, and now poured down on Giovanno like a waterfall.

Naturally, he was soaking wet.

It was cold.

Whether by good luck or bad, Giovanno had somehow kept wandering the forest without being attacked by monsters, but the cold rain mercilessly drained his strength.

“With this much...... water, at least I shan't die of thirst for now. Splendid, splendid......”

He might put on a brave front out loud, but Giovanno could feel that he was nearing his limit.

Giovanno was a man past forty who had hardly ever exercised, and who had then spent the better part of a year locked in a cell.

The fact that he had been able to wander through the forest for several hours was a miracle in itself.

(......【Invisible Hand】)

In an attempt to shield himself from the falling rain even slightly, Giovanno tried activating his special ability.

“Special abilities.”

Supernatural powers that work by unknown principles, whose users appear only very rarely.

The famous “Great Mage” defined this power in his writings as ‘a primitive form of magic that can be activated without an incantation’, but putting that aside.

Giovanno had been able to use such an ability since he was a young child.

His special ability, 【Invisible Hand】, was the ability to create invisible “hands” to hold or carry things.

The effective range was a space of a few meters centered on himself.

Thanks to this ability, he could sip tea by making a cup float in mid-air while holding documents in both hands!

When the young soldier tripped over nothing earlier, that had been Giovanno hooking his foot with 【Invisible Hand】.

To tell the truth, the trump card he had intended to use against Mereucce a year ago was this 【Invisible Hand】.

He had planned to catch the knife that missed its mark with 【Invisible Hand】 and launch a surprise attack on Mereucce from behind.

That plan had been crushed by the woman in the maid outfit called Viola, who was likely an agent of the Runtart family's shadow unit.

Now, Giovanno played that trump card once again.

He intended to use 【Invisible Hand】 to create an awning and weather the rain.

“............”

But, still, alas, how cruel.

The 【Invisible Hand】 he created was...... very small.

In fact, he could only create a hand about the size of his own palm.

It was utterly impossible to block the rain beating down on his entire body.

“As expected...... of nature's fury...... I literally have no ‘hand’ left to play......”

His trump card was defeated by the fury of Mother Nature (rain).

It was a conclusion that had been obvious even before he tried.

But it would be cruel to point that out to Giovanno, whose mind had begun to blur.

“U, kuh......”

And then, at last, Giovanno pitched forward onto the ground.

The muddy soil made his tattered prisoner's clothes look even more miserably filthy.

He was covered in mud.

“......Pwah...... Haah, haah......”

He just barely managed to lift his face, sparing himself the fate of drowning in a puddle.

“Haah...... how truly, pathetically, I cling...... haah......”

He had done things that meant he deserved to die.

He could tell himself that all he liked, but dying was still frightening.

His instincts greedily fought to stretch out a life he himself could see no value in.

He should not live anymore.

But he didn't want to die.

He was scared.

It was galling.

Why.

Damn you, Runtart.

Ah, ah, ah......

His mind was in such a chaotic mess that he didn't even know what he was thinking.

But his heart refused, absolutely, to give up beating.

And that struggle of his instincts, that obsession with life, grasped a single miracle!

(......Th, that's......?)

As Giovanno managed to lift his face and look ahead, he discovered a towering rock wall and a single cave yawning open there!

Having walked desperately without knowing his direction, after several hours of wandering, Giovanno had miraculously reached the cliffs at the western edge of Mount Nanga.

(For now...... shelter from the rain)

He had thought he couldn't move so much as a finger anymore, but his body apparently still had a little strength in reserve, and the moment it had a goal it could see, the cave, it set his limbs moving desperately.

That said, both his arms were bound together by chains.

More clumsily than a caterpillar, Giovanno groaned and crawled desperately toward the cave.

◇ ◇ ◇

“Gu, nnh...... Haah, haah......”

Squeezing out the last of his strength, Giovanno managed to roll into the cave, and lying on his back with his eyes closed, he let out ragged breaths.

“Haah, haah, haah......”

And he remained like that for a while.

He couldn't think at all.

What he could hear from outside the cave was the zaa zaa of the pouring rain.

And, occasionally, the goro goro of thunder.

On the other hand, the sounds he could hear inside the cave were his own ragged breaths.

And, the pachi pachi of twigs popping in a campfire......

(............A campfire!!?)

A campfire, in a cave in Zamago Forest, which lay in the demon realm, edge or not!?

His eyes wide with shock, Giovanno turned his head toward the sound of the fire, and there lay a creature the size of a bear, with brown scales and three eyes!

“M, Mountain Topopolock!?”

It was a ferocious monster that Giovanno had only ever seen in encyclopedias!

A dangerous creature said to have wiped out a Pokkeroce Kingdom platoon marching through the mountains all by itself, with charges driven by its powerful legs!

“Th, this cave is a Mountain Topopolock's...... nest......!?”

Those words spilled from his mouth instinctively, but he soon realized he was mistaken.

Because this Mountain Topopolock...... once he calmed down and looked, it was already dead.

There was no light left in its three bright red eyes, and meat had been carved away all over its body, exposing the bone.

“What...... is this......?”

Still at a loss, Giovanno somehow sat up and looked around the cave.

This cave was high enough for an adult to stand and walk without difficulty, but it wasn't particularly deep.

With the rain falling over Zamago Forest, no sunlight got through and the forest was dark, but the inside of this cave was bright.

Because in the middle of the cave burned the campfire that had been going pachi pachi all this time.

“......!!”

And at last, Giovanno became aware of its presence.

He became aware that someone had already claimed this cave before him.

That person...... or at least, that human-shaped being, was roasting meat on the bone over the campfire beside the Mountain Topopolock, and...... munching away on it, half-raw and dripping with blood.

Small in build.

She wore something like a girl's one-piece dress, and somehow had animal furs wrapped around the exposed parts of her skin.

Compared to Giovanno in his mud-covered prisoner's clothes, it was an outfit that could hardly be called civilized.

Dressed like that was...... a girl.

And above all, her looks deserved special mention.

First to catch the eye were the black hair and black eyes illuminated by the campfire.

In other words, the girl was a cursed child.

Had they not met in such dire straits, Giovanno would probably have frowned the moment she came into view.

But right now, Giovanno was in no state to be fussing about cursed children being creepy or whatnot.

And so, he noticed.

This girl, was tremendously, beautiful.

Large eyes that tilted up slightly, a well-shaped nose and lips, a small face, white skin......

It would be no exaggeration to call her a beauty without equal.

This girl, in whom a loathsomeness that made you want to look away lived side by side with a beauty you couldn't take your eyes off, sat beside the campfire, staring intently at Giovanno without any expression.

In both hands, she held Topopolock meat on the bone.

The girl never took her eyes off Giovanno, but she didn't stop eating, either.

She brought the meat in each hand to her mouth by turns, devouring it at a tremendous speed.

(......Just what is this girl............?)

Giovanno was bewildered.

Fat from the meat in the girl's hands dripped into the campfire and flared up with a juu.

Giovanno is a special-ability user, the first to appear in a while!

Incidentally, this story has three seemingly similar? concepts: ‘special abilities’, ‘magic’, and ‘magecraft’, which has only shown up as a word so far, with no detailed explanation yet.

‘Magic technique’...... hasn't appeared yet, I'm pretty sure.

If anything, shorten ‘magic power manipulation technique’ and you get ‘magic technique’, maybe.

There's a “Great Mage”-san who seems like someone who could explain all this properly, but this person's actual appearance is planned for a good while from now.

Even though that epithet keeps popping up, huh.