Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter 9

Extra Chapter:

The Berserker Sword King and the Blessed Child

WHILE RUDEUS SAID his goodbyes to Cliff, there was another reunion underway.

It took place at the church headquarters, in a serene garden, where spring flowers bloomed in a riot of color. A lot of the trees were leaning slantwise after Rudeus’s Quagmire a few weeks earlier, but their vigor was in no way diminished. The Sarakh Trees had finished flowering, and the Balta Trees took their place and were now bursting with blossoms.

Two women stood before the trees, facing one another. One had blonde hair, the other red. They were both busty and fairly tall for women. Swords hung at their waists, and one wore a suit of blue armor.

Therese and Eris. 

Also present, standing behind Therese like she was trying to hide in her shadow, was the Blessed Child. She fidgeted, rubbing her knees together and trying to look smaller. 

Oh, yeah, and there were also a bunch of guys in blue armor standing around the three women, I guess. Think of them as scenery.

“Come now, Blessed Child,” Therese said gently to the Blessed Child behind her. “Look! It’s Lady Eris! Rudeus made time especially for her to see you.” But the Blessed Child just curled further in on herself and kept fidgeting.

“C-come on, now… It’s Eris,” Therese tried again.

Eris was her hero. Stretching back into her earliest memories, the Blessed Child had been shut up in her white room. When something bad happened, she was brought out, sat before some grown-up who also didn’t want to be there, and made to sift through their unsavory thoughts. 

That was her entire world. No room for freedom. No hope.

Then one day, as she was escorted from some place to another, she and her guards were ambushed. Surrounded by assassins, she was sure her life was about to end. But she didn’t feel especially frightened or concerned for her own life. She quietly welcomed her fate.

And then, Eris arrived.

Her movements were all so direct, yet none of the attackers could keep up with her. All they saw was an afterimage of red hair burned into their minds.

She was brilliant. From the first fraction of a moment she laid her eyes on Eris, the Blessed Child saw a divine, righteous beast.

“I’m glad the child’s unharmed,” she had said. It wasn’t until they returned to the church that the Blessed Child realized that the glorious warrior meant her. She realized that she’d been saved. Then, she remembered that she’d seen the woman’s eyes, and therefore knew her name. Eris. Her name was Eris. Eris Boreas Greyrat.

The Blessed Child said it out loud, replaying the memory in her mind. From that moment on, she idolized the Eris in her memory.

She started to imitate Eris. She reacted to things with wild exclamations, and she roared her decisions. She shoveled down mountains of food.

All this endeared her to her guards, the Keepers of Anastasia, which only encouraged the Blessed Child to love Eris even more. A long time had passed since she first started to model herself after Eris. Her own personality and the ideal woman in her mind were perfectly enmeshed with one another. She wore it like a second skin.

Around this time, she met Rudeus, Through him, she became reacquainted with Eris secondhand. 

The Blessed Child assumed she would never see Eris again. She wanted to, but she never asked for permission. She knew all too well that she didn’t have that kind of authority. But when she heard that Eris was here, in Millishion, she couldn’t help herself. She went to the cardinal and to the pope, and begged them to let her see Sword King Eris. The Berserker Sword King was dangerous, she acknowledged, but she wanted to see her nevertheless—even if only briefly. Just long enough to say thank you.

No one objected and so her humble request was approved. A meeting between the Blessed Child and the deadly Berserker Sword King was arranged, with a guarantee from Rudeus that, “If anything happens to her, I’ll take the blame.”

With Eris in front of her, however, the Blessed Child had no idea what to say. She felt like looking into Eris’s memories would be rude, so she deliberately didn’t meet her eyes.

Eris stood there, her arms folded. She’d already introduced herself as Rudeus’s wife and a Sword King. After that, Therese introduced herself, then offered her thanks for Eris’s past assistance. That was about five minutes ago.

“Hey, we don’t have much time, you know,” Therese said.

Eris stood still on her best behavior. It didn’t come naturally to her, but Rudeus had given her strict instructions, so she kept her impatience in check.

“She really helped me out, so try to be polite,” he’d said. “She might come across as a bit stuck-up, but under no circumstances are you to punch her, okay?”

Eris would do as he said. Still, she was starting to get irritated. She was not into waiting around.

“Can we hurry this up?” she said.

That was all she said, but it was enough to make the Blessed Child squeak, “O-of course!” and jump out from behind Therese. Fear that she was making Eris angry won out over embarrassment. 

“Um, er, I’m the Blessed Child! Thank you very much for the time you saved my life!”

“What…? Don’t recall that!” Eris declared.

“You don’t?”

Eris said it so loudly and directly that the Blessed Child, on instinct, looked into her eyes. “…Oh,” she said. When she looked, she saw no trace of herself at all. Her face fell.

Well, what did you expect? she told herself. You knew, you knew there was no way she remembered. Even so, all this time she’d held on to hope that just maybe Eris might remember her. That she might say something like, Oh, right, the kid from back then! You’ve grown up! The Blessed Child was smitten with her, after all.

But Eris had seen her face and been told what had happened, and she didn’t remember her at all. 

Maybe if I looked for longer, I might find a memory stowed away in a corner somewhere…

But when Eris thought of long ago, the only memories the Blessed Child found were of Therese dangling Rudeus on her knees.

She was the Blessed Child of Memory. She knew that memories were fallible and easily forgotten. That did nothing to lessen her disappointment.

“But Rudeus said you saved him, right?” Eris went on animatedly. “Thanks for that!”

She stood tall with her arms folded. Her bold voice tore through the Blessed Child’s haze of disappointment. The Blessed Child shook her head to clear her mind.

“Not at all…” she said. “I would have done anything to help your husband, Lady Eris.” 

It didn’t matter if Eris didn’t remember her. She still loved her and was still grateful to her.

“By the way,” Eris pressed on, “what’s your name, anyway? Rudeus said he’s going to be working with you in the future, so I want to make sure I remember!”

“My what…?”

Name? I don’t have a name, she thought. Up until now, it had never felt like an impediment. But now here was Eris, saying she wanted to remember it, and the Blessed Child had no answer. She was lacking something important. That missing thing struck her, suddenly, as a profound loss.

“Erm…I don’t…”

“A Blessed Child is just like, you know, like what Zanoba is, isn’t it? It’s not your name, right?” Eris forged on. 

When she said “Zanoba,” the Blessed Child looked into her eyes again. There was another Blessed Child from another land who apparently possessed a name. Eris didn’t care much about him, though, so she didn’t remember anything apart from the name. It was a shock. 

The set dressing started piping up.

“How dare you!”

“The Blessed Child is the Blessed Child!”

“You mock her?!”

“She needs no name!”

“Pray that your god protects you!”

This helped her calm down a bit. Not having a name had never been a hindrance to her before, she told herself. Besides, she couldn’t do anything to change it now.

“I’m very sorry, but I don’t have a name,” she said.

“Huh… Well, that works too,” Eris said, unfazed.

The Blessed Child didn’t look into her eyes, so she didn’t know what Eris was thinking. If she had looked, she might have seen how Eris came to throw away the name “Boreas.” She would have known that names meant nothing to Eris.

Eris exhaled through her nose, then said, “Names, pah! Who needs ’em anyway?”

The Blessed Child was relieved. In all her life, this was the most she’d ever agonized over whether to look into someone’s eyes.

“It was rather surprising to hear you were here, though,” she remarked. “I didn’t think you were in the country.”

“Yeah, Rudeus’s jimmies are still rustled, so I came running…uh, real fast!” 

Eris knew that the teleportation circles had to be kept secret. But the Blessed Child, who was well aware of their existence, giggled.

“Ah, did you really?” she said. “You are quite incredible, Lady Eris.”

“Heh, damn right!” Eris replied. She looked pleased now, and the atmosphere of the whole garden relaxed. Sensing this, the Blessed Child decided she would flatter Eris more, which could only make the exchange more pleasant. Normally, it wouldn’t even occur to her to push the conversation one way or another.

“The…the thing is, you’ve always been my idol, Lady Eris!”

“Wait, what?”

“Yes,” the Blessed Child went on, “so please tell me how I can be like you!” Eris looked down at the Blessed Child. She saw her round face, her plump arms, and her fluffy, out-of-shape body.

“You want to be like me?” she asked.

“I do! I always wanted to be as cool as you, like the way you talk…uh?”

She noticed that Eris had drawn her sword—too late. Only two of her guards were quick enough to react. They were two of the best swordsmen in the Temple Knights, and both already knew that they were doomed.

Eris’s sword was already moving. There was no sword, or even Eris anymore, merely a flash of light in the air, but they sensed something had been cut and severed. Something…!

Who could have done this? Well, who else?

“How dare you!”

“You didn’t—!” 

The Blessed Child’s arm dropped…

…to her side, precisely as a branch that was about half the thickness of her wrist came crashing to the ground. The Temple Knights stared at it in silence for a moment, then went back to being scenery like nothing had happened.

Eris picked up the branch, then briskly set about snapping off all the off-shooting twigs. The Blessed Child stared at her, thinking about how Eris’s sword had appeared in an instant, what a wonderful sword it was, and how none of the Temple Knights’ swords remotely compared.

When Eris was done tidying up the twigs, she was left with a staff about a meter long.

“There you go,” she said, holding it out to the Blessed Child.

“Um…?” The Blessed Child stared at her, wide-eyed with confusion.

Eris turned side face, gripped her sword in both hands, raised it above her head—then swung down. A holy whoosh so loud, it might banish evil, shattered the silence of the garden. The Blessed Child’s ears rang.

“Your turn,” said Eris.

“U…uh? Um, yes, ma’am.”

She lifted the staff above her head like Eris had done. Then, with a little “Hi-yah!” she took a swing. But her “weapon” was an unruly, unbalanced meter-long stick, heavy and still green and supple off the tree, so the force of the swing pulled The Blessed Child along with it. She stumbled forward. The scenery cried out, “Ohh!” but didn’t mobilize.

“Er, how do I—”

“Lower your body more,” Eris said, “then relax your elbows and try to swing with your back. Try again.”

“Y-yes, ma’am!”

She kept swinging the staff without a clue what was going on. Every time she swung, Eris gave her advice.

“…You’ve gotta use your voice when you swing: one, two, one, two!”

“One, two, one, two!” 

The Temple Knights didn’t get involved. They didn’t understand it either, but they could see that Eris wasn’t a threat to the Blessed Child, and so they saw no need to put a stop to things. Plus, it was cute seeing her swinging that stick around. The captain eventually tried stepping in, but the other knights held her back. The entire skirmish between props played out without anyone on the main stage noticing.

“Haa…haa…Lady Eris…” gasped the Blessed Child after around thirty swings, her voice trembling. “My…my arms…”

“Yeah? Okay, that’s enough then. You can stop,” Eris said. The Blessed Child dropped the staff as instructed. The fatigue spread from her shoulders down to her wrists, almost like her whole upper torso was falling asleep. She felt a twinging sensation, like little cracks were spreading down her arms. She raised them up to her ears and swore she heard her muscles creak.

“U-um…” she said, looking up at Eris, worried. Why had she been swinging that staff? She felt like she’d been tested. Was she a failure? Was Eris disgusted with her? Ha! You thought you could be like me?

The thought made her feel miserable.

“You’re to do that every day, starting tomorrow,” Eris said. “Also, start running. Around this garden will do.”

“Huh?”

“If you don’t know what to do, ask one of these guys,” said Eris.

She was looking right at the Blessed Child. Feeling as though Eris’s eyes were drawing her in, the Blessed Child looked into her memories. 

She saw the hard life Eris had led training in the Sword Sanctum. She saw her swinging her sword without food or drink, running through the snow, screaming, fighting, honing her skills. It was a simple memory. A mere sequence of events, showing how Eris had gone from who she was long ago to who she was now. There had been hardships and suffering, but that honed Eris into the person she was today.

“You can be like me,” Eris said. Her voice was clear and certain. Had Rudeus been there, he might have cut in with a snide remark, like Yeah, I don’t think that’s happening… But he wasn’t. There was no one around to tell her it was impossible. 

“Um…” came a voice from behind her.

The Blessed Child turned and found herself looking into Therese’s eyes. She saw Therese’s own memories of her training. 

Therese practiced with her sword in secret, then trained together with the men, all while her mother sniped at her. At times she was happy, and at times she was sad. One thing was constant: she never put down her sword.

The Blessed Child then looked around at the other Temple Knights. She glanced through them all, one at a time. What she saw in the depths of their eyes was not as intense as what she had seen for Eris, but she saw plenty of effort. Memories not only of sword training, but of magic and schoolwork, were vividly etched into their minds. Not one of them doubted that Eris’s training plan would get results. 

She could be like Eris. It was possible.

It would be hard, she knew that. It had been hard for all of them, too. But she could do it.

“Can I really… Is this going to work?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” It was Therese who answered. “You won’t be allowed to use magic, or a real sword, but there shouldn’t be any issue with just physical training… You’ll all help teach her too, right?” she asked, looking around at the scenery. Then she returned her gaze to the Blessed Child.

Staring into her eyes, Therese said earnestly, “If something happens, though, if you’re attacked by assassins or something, you must promise me that you’ll sit back and leave it to us to take care of them.”

Within her memories, the Blessed Child saw an inexperienced noble taking on an enemy and dying. Therese was being kind. She was telling the Blessed Child not to let herself share that fate.

“In the name of Saint Millis, I swear it,” the Blessed Child said, nodding happily. Everything felt indescribably joyful. As though summoned by the happy atmosphere, the silver owl, which had been tootling aimlessly around the garden during their discussion, returned to her side. It tilted its head, looking up at the Blessed Child and hooting.

“Whatever is the matter?” she asked, crouching down and holding her hand out to it. The silver owl leaned forward, like it wanted her to scratch its head. She rubbed its feathered crown with her fingertips, and its downy feathers fluffed up as it closed its eyes in pleasure. Eris watched them, desperate to join in. She loved beastfolk, but not just beastfolk—any kind of fluffy animal was good in her books. She met plenty of dogs and cats, but never birds. She could bring down a bird in flight if necessary, but she rarely had the chance to approach a bird this big if she wasn’t fighting it.

“Hey, um… Can I pet your owl too?” she asked.

“It’d be my pleasure!” replied the Blessed Child.

Having received permission, Eris squatted down confidently. Her pawing was so forceful that the silver owl recoiled from her touch. Eris went perfectly still. Sudden movements, she’d learned, were a no-go. Animals instinctively feared anything that was stronger and faster than they were. Forcing submission made them obedient, but if you wanted them to like you, you had to convince them that you weren’t a threat.

Linia had told her that while submitting to Eris in bed one time. In fact, ever since she’d started acting on that advice, all the pets at Rudeus’s house stopped being so terrified of her. Now they simply closed their eyes and accepted their fate.

Eris reached out, slow as anything. The silver owl didn’t move. It watched her with nervous eyes and huffed a little, but it seemed to respect its mistress’s wishes and didn’t pull away. Her fingertips reached its feathers. Its wing feathers looked fairly stiff from a distance, but now she felt how soft they were and her heart leapt with excitement. She wanted to grab it and bury her face in its feathers, but she sensed that was overkill. It’d definitely flap away if she tried it. The same went for Leo, and for Linia and Pursena too. 

She could live with that. Eris went on stroking the silver owl. The owl froze like an impala caught in a lion’s jaws, but none of the humans noticed.

“Do you like my owl?”

“Turns out birds are great too,” said Eris. She luxuriated in the owl’s softness for a time, then stood up, her cheeks flushed. Fur was nice enough, but feathers, she thought, were on a whole other level. 

A question suddenly occurred to her. “What’s its name, anyway?”

“Its…its name?” repeated the Blessed Child, looking confused, and thinking, oh dear, names again.

“When you get a pet, you give it a name. That’s plain old common sense,” Eris said.

“Is it really?”

“Yup, Rudeus said so,” said Eris.

The Blessed Child was taken aback. A name? She’d never given anything a name before—she didn’t even have one herself. She would never be allowed to use one. It did seem like having one made some things easier, however, which gave her pause.

“A name…” she murmured. Seeing her looking so deeply lost, the scenery got all worked up.

“Blessed Child…”

“Allow me…”

“No, allow me…!”

“Fools! The Blessed Child must decide for herself.”

Just then, a man appeared in the garden. An intruder on their private meeting.

“Hey, Eris, I’m all done now,” said Rudeus.

Our hero, returned from his farewell with Cliff, and feeling a touch sentimental, was…no, hold on, strike that, like I had time to wallow around feeling sentimental—I was getting ready for battle. I had to be a robot, a sentinel.

Anyway, there’s a little insight into how Rudeus was feeling as he entered the garden, his face set.

Seeing the rest of them, he asked, “Um, what happened?”

“She’s picking a name.”

“A name…?” He looked around the garden. The Blessed Child looked troubled, and the otaku watched her nervously. The newly appointed captain looked as though she had no idea what was going on. Therese’s smile was strained. 

That told him all he needed to know. 

Oof, that’s a tricky one. I’m sure Eris wasn’t trying to be mean, though.

Then the Blessed Child piped up, saying, “Oh! Would you choose a name for me, Rudeus? I’d be so grateful.” She couldn’t choose one herself, but she was sure it would be a piece of cake for Rudeus.

“Wait, me? Are you sure?”

“Incredibly so,” she replied.

Rudeus frowned, looking between Eris and the Blessed Child. He had to make a good choice, but he’d shown up mere seconds ago and his brain was stalling. His thoughts ran around and around in circles like a hamster wheel, then ground to a halt. That hamster was pooped.

Then, a name popped into his mind. A remnant of his past life that reminded him of the Blessed Child, her soft voice, and the joy she spread.

“Okay,” he said. “How about ‘Nurse’?”

“Nurse? Why, that’s a wonderful name!” she said, then squatted down to pet Nurse’s head. “Starting today, your name is Nurse!” 

Watching her, Rudeus let out a little gasp of surprise.

“Is something the matter?”

“Er, no, it’s nothing,” he said, averting his eyes. Exactly like someone hiding something would do. She wondered what might be on his mind, but otherwise she felt perfectly satisfied. She had gotten to see her beloved Eris, and her owl had a name. She also had her training, starting tomorrow. It had, she thought, been a very good day.

“Thank you so much for coming today, Lady Eris,” she said.

“I’ll be back! And when I’m back I’ll take another look at your form.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Eris was satisfied too. She got to stroke the owl. That was more than enough for her.

The same went for the scenery. Eris gave them a bit of a scare when she pulled out her sword, but if the Blessed Child was happy, they were happy.

Starting tomorrow, all of them thought, I’ll be there to give her footholds and handholds and whatever else she needs for her training.

Rudeus alone stood sweating, thinking, Ah, crap, as he kept his face down. 

Therese was the only one who noticed. Just who did you think you were naming, hmmm? she thought. She didn’t say anything, though. She just smirked.

Nurse watched them all, its head cocked to one side.

And so, Eris got herself another apprentice. Starting the next day, the Blessed Child started to lose weight, which made the Temple Knights treat her even more like a pop idol… But that’s a story for another time.