The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

"I'm here to wake you up." Qingzi glanced at the blue sky and white clouds to the side, her voice clearly tinged with guilt. "I don't know why, but I always feel quite uncomfortable watching you make fun of others."

"What if I had actually fainted just now?"

"Even if you really fainted, I don't think my kick could cause you any physical harm, probably."

""

""

“Mr. Hearn, please stand up and speak. Why did you have a conflict with Joshua?”

Pandora, who had been standing silently to the side, interrupted. Her words eased the tense atmosphere to some extent. The believer released her grip, stood up from under the rubble, and casually dusted off her clothes, all the dust disappearing from her body.

“Joshua is not a shallow person. On the contrary, as a paladin, he has always been very good at controlling his emotions. He often loses control in front of me, but that is intentional, just to get a chance to fight me. He is a sword fanatic who believes in communicating with each other through swords. He believes that in the clash of swords, both sides can naturally understand each other's will. Unfortunately, he is destined not to have his wish, because he is a true swordsman, while I am actually a novice.”

The believer glanced back at the bustling scene on the other side of the hole, a wicked smile of triumph flashing across her lips. She waved to the people beside her, signaling them to leave.

“Mr. Joshua has always been fair and just, a kind-hearted man, so why is he targeting you at every turn, Mr. Hern?” Yonglin naturally remembered how she escaped from that slave trader’s caravan, and was also extremely puzzled.

"He thinks I have impure motives. Their messy affairs are a tangled mess, a thankless job, and I got involved without even asking for any compensation. It's understandable that he finds me suspicious."

“I see, this must be the prejudice that carbon-based life forms hold,” Pandora said knowingly.

“You can understand it that way too.” The believer had always felt that this silicon-based life form had a rather unique way of thinking. Having him around would occasionally create some pleasant and amusing atmosphere. However, his gaze wandered and then settled on the silent former mage beside him. The latter’s expression was normal, but his eyes had lost some color, and his brows were slightly furrowed, as if he was deep in thought.

"Aoko."

"what?"

"Something's not right with you."

"Huh? You're the one who's acting strange."

"Want to go back and have a drink?"

"Huh? Oh, um."

Chapter 106 Questioning the Heart (Part 1)

It was night, the moon was bright and the stars were few, and the sea was shrouded in mist.

On a small hill overlooking the sea outside Silver Harbor, the believer casually cleared a space and took out small items such as a table, a couch, and wine utensils from the subspace. After everything was arranged, she took out a pot of wine in a celadon bottle from the crack.

As the wine was poured into the cup, it immediately became soaked with moonlight. A pure, sweet fruit flavor mixed with a rich aroma of wine wafted past the nose. After pouring two cups, the believer set the wine pot aside and then sprinkled two wisps of blue fire onto the two cups of wine. The flames disappeared in an instant.

Aoko was curious about his last move and asked if it was some kind of ritual. Shinjo waved her hand and explained with a helpless expression.

“Every autumn, the monkeys in the forest would pick a variety of fruits and pile them in a tree hole. If there was enough food for winter, the monkeys would forget that they had ever stored a hole of fruits. Then the fruits would gradually ferment and eventually become a kind of fruit wine.”

"It's actually wine brewed by monkeys?"

"It's a stroke of luck that this thing requires a lot of chance. The tree hole where the fruit is stored must be hollow and sealed, and the fruit must be able to survive the winter without rotting. Not to mention that it can only be kept for one season after the spring and is ruined in the summer. Under all these coincidences, it is rare for a hundred fruit to produce a single piece of monkey wine."

“If that’s true, then it is indeed a rare and precious wine. But don’t try to fool me. You said it yourself: this stuff is ready to drink in the spring and is ruined in the summer. Isn’t it still winter now?” Qingzi picked up the still warm wine cup, sniffed the mellow wine, and then gestured for him to stop talking nonsense.

The woman rolled her eyes at her words, then picked up her wine cup and asked softly, "So what if it's winter? Aoko, aren't you someone who manages time yourself?"

"Aoko was stunned for a moment when she was asked the question, then she realized what she meant. She twitched her lips in disbelief and asked in surprise, "Have you become so bored these days? Going to the forest of trees to find those tree holes piled with fruits and giving them time to ferment faster?"

"Otherwise what? Could it be that you still have some misunderstanding about my luck?" The believer shrugged, her words confirming the other party's guess, and then answered the previous question, "As for why I set it on fire, you know that although wild game is delicious, it's not very good at sterilization. What I just did was to disinfect and sterilize it."

“Even though bacteria are meaningless to both of us, I remember you have a slight obsession with cleanliness in some ways.” Aoko recalled some minor details from the past and quickly got the answer.

"Do you know how precious those words you just said were to me?" the believer replied jokingly, but without waiting for a response, she simply extended her wine cup forward. "Shall we have a drink?"

"Suddenly getting nostalgic? You used to be a monster who could never be caught up by the past, you brat." Aoko said this, but also gladly handed over a wine cup.

Amidst the clinking of glasses, a soft sound rang out, and ripples appeared on the surface of the two moonlight lamps before they were emptied in one gulp.

A brief silence fell over the drinking party, as if the drinkers were savoring the aftertaste of the wine.

But it doesn't seem so.

A moment later, the believer opened her eyes, picked up the wine pot and poured wine into the two cups on the table again. As she did so, she uttered a seemingly random remark.

"Just ask."

This impromptu drinking party originated from his invitation during the day, and the reason for the invitation stemmed from doubts about the words and actions of his old friend.

In contrast, Aozaki Aoko pondered, gazing at the familiar stranger before her, this unfamiliar old friend, speechless for a moment.

In the end, the person pouring the wine only heard one sentence.

How are you doing these days?

"Ok?"

The woman looked up, her expression initially one of surprise, then turning to a hint of relief. She smiled slightly and said, "I thought you would ask why Yagokoro Eirin was brought back to life, or the reasons for the current situation, or something like that."

“Believers, it’s precisely because it’s me sitting here drinking with you, and not someone else, that I’m asking such questions.” Aoko looked directly into his eyes, into those blue eyes that were similar in color to hers but with a slightly thinner pigment, until she was finally certain that they were exactly the same as those from the distant past in her memory. Only then did she feel a little relieved and say, “As for the rest, I don’t want to care, and I can’t care. You’ve already grown up and learned to clean up your own messes.”

""

""

"Well, I've always thought that the part of my personality that's about being a hands-off boss is something I learned from you, Aoko."

"I never taught you that kind of thing, you brat!"

"Yes, of course you don't have time to teach these things. You're always like that, always in a hurry, like the wind, suddenly appearing in the world of a little devil who's about to go astray, and then suddenly disappearing one day, leaving only a receding figure, and never heard from again." The believer's tone was faint, as if she were lost in some kind of memory.

“Believer, if you are subtly telling me that if I hadn’t left back then, things wouldn’t have turned out that way twelve years later, I’ve always wanted to tell you that even now, I still regret my negligence and inaction back then. If I had noticed the great demon hiding in the shadows earlier, perhaps there wouldn’t be just the two of us sitting here today.”

"No, Qingzi, I think you've misunderstood. In fact, your cheap student has never complained about you, and you don't need to regret your so-called 'inaction.' You've done everything a stranger could do, haven't you? No, it's not even a casual encounter. You said you believe in chance and fate, but the reason we met was only because of Da Yuan's instructions. In other words, we should have been strangers on two parallel lines. If we have to delve into the similarities between us, then we can only say that we are destined to have our own tribulations."

“Woman, compared to your fate, mine is at most a family dispute.”

"That's simply because the causes we bear are different, and the intensity of the corresponding consequences is also different. It's not a pleasant experience for the people involved, is it?"

"Why does it seem like you're the one comforting me?" Qingzi chuckled, offering the wine cup again in a gesture of respect.

The believer understood and immediately clinked her wine cup against his.

The two drank the fine wine from the forest again, then looked up into the distance, where the moon was high in the sky.

"To be honest, I did have some complaints about you, Aoko."

"Huh? Didn't you just say you wouldn't complain?"

"That's the other part."

"Okay, tell me."

"You left without saying goodbye back then."

""

"In that short eighteen years of 'life,' I was constantly encountering and gaining, but inevitably losing everything. At that time, I thought that a human life was just like that—walking and stopping along the way, falling down and getting up again, moving forward and letting go. The only thing that I regret is that I never said goodbye properly."

"My believer, it's not what you think. Actually, I'm not good at saying goodbye at all."

"Is that so? Then who exactly is afraid of being caught up by the past?"

As the woman poured the wine, she returned his earlier remarks to him, which was met with another brief silence.

He didn't disturb the other person's silence, but simply poured himself a drink, and then suddenly answered the original question again.

"I'm doing so well now, well, so-so. After all, I'm not as amazing as you, able to calmly accept my life as a mage and still love living a normal life. You put in twice the effort to properly handle your so-called 'family disputes,' while also fully enjoying the normal seventeen-year-old youth."

"In this respect, I've always felt I'm far inferior to you, Aoko. Hatred caused my life to plummet from a positive point to a negative one, and even if I succeeded in revenge, it would only have brought my life back to zero. That's why, when you came to me, I had already become the person you know. Revenge is truly just a process of returning from nothingness to zero; it brings a sense of pleasure, but ultimately it's all meaningless and ultimately empty."

"Well, I've only been in university for a short time. I live alone in a house by Lake Zurich, leading a quiet and disciplined life. I don't have any bad habits; I don't smoke, and I only drink a little alcohol. I usually go to bed at 11 pm and get at least 8 hours of sleep every night. Before bed, I take a relaxing bath, drink a glass of warm milk afterward, and then do 20-30 minutes of yoga to fully relax my body. After that, I go straight to bed and try to sleep through the night, never leaving fatigue or stress for the next day. Every morning, I wake up feeling refreshed, like a baby. After my routine medical check-up during my first winter of university, the doctor said I was perfectly normal."

“Qingzi, I know where your concerns come from, but you really don’t need to worry that I’m still living in the past, living in some dark memories. I’ve started to try, to try to catch up with some scenery that I once missed, instead of being hopelessly focused on the outcome like before. I’m starting to try to find a balance between process and result. In my current view, the world is still very interesting, and I’m still looking forward to tomorrow—is this answer enough to put your mind at ease?”

Chapter 107 Questioning the Heart (Part 2)

"As for why I am here in Thranheim at this moment, I had no idea until recently, when I found some sketches on the distant sea where the dragons and angels fought, I vaguely understood that someone had once again committed the sin of arrogance, and the reason I came here was to correct it."

As the woman finished speaking, a soft murmur drifted past his ears. He turned his head at the sound and saw that his drinking buddy on the other side had somehow succumbed to his drunkenness and was fast asleep at his desk.

The woman chuckled, then he poured himself a drink, leisurely raising his cup to the moon. He, who usually didn't enjoy wine and only drank a little, was unusually inclined to drink to his heart's content tonight.

“Mr. Hern, it is worth mentioning that the moon you see right now is merely a projection of the inner workings of a giant structure called the Canopy.”

He heard light footsteps behind him, as well as the voice of another companion.

Pandora strolled over, stopped beside him, gazed at the false white moon in the sky, and explained to him.

"Since the completion of the sky canopy, the inhabitants of Thranheim have not seen the real starry sky for many years."

"It's alright. I'm not paying homage to this foreign white moon. Besides, the so-called white moon and the Lord of Ether probably don't like us much either."

As usual, the believer finished drinking the moonlight from her cup, then suddenly asked on a whim, "Want a drink?"

"No need, I'm still a minor," Pandora politely declined.

"Hmm?" The believer chuckled upon hearing this, her tone tinged with curiosity, and then teased, "Who taught you that?"

"Pandora Reinhardt".

Has her self-awareness become clearer?

"Yes."

"That's it"

The mechanical girl's voice was devoid of joy or sorrow, while the believer fell into a subtle contemplation.

Regarding the strange occurrences involving this mechanical girl, combined with the few pages of sketches and her past encounter in the far north where she was resurrected, many clues converged, and the believer had already begun to form several deductions in her mind.

Unfortunately, neither of these methods currently lacks definitive evidence to draw a conclusion.

Even if a weak hypothesis is interesting, it cannot achieve any positive significance. Before drawing a conclusion, the believer did not intend to tell the other party about those conjectures.

A beehive above the sky, a silver ridge in the far north.

The believer believed that the answers to the mystery surrounding the girl existed in those two places.

“Pandora, tomorrow we will leave this silver port city and travel to the North as mercenaries for that Far Eastern princess.”

The believer told her companion the results of her discussion with Salome Reinhardt during the day.

“Yes, that was expected. Now that the Children of Earth have returned home to the west, the legendary Promised Land hidden deep in the far north, the so-called eternal and indestructible Garden of Eden, is their unavoidable destination on this westward journey.” Pandora nodded, showing no surprise, even appearing overly indifferent. “How many people does she plan to take?”

"Not many, probably just a few trusted confidants, and the bare minimum number of soldiers that the Sons of Earth can accept. Oh, right, and a few mercenaries who can be put to use, like us." The believer symbolically moved her fingers, giving a casual estimate, "A team of about a hundred people in total."

"A wise move, then the number of people who die will be only a hundred or so."

"How ruthless it is, almost frighteningly so, to issue a judgment so early, Pandora." The believer leisurely finished her drink and replied in a low voice, "Although my thoughts are much the same."

"Salome Reinhardt is no fool who stays at home. On the contrary, she once commanded Elijah, the guardian angel of the Ring of Kingdoms. He represents the highest level of power in the Ring of Kingdoms and the ultimate authority that Thranheim can exercise under the Blood Pact. Even if she lost Elijah, her vision is far beyond what the mortal beings of Thranheim can compare to. In other words, she had already foreseen the bloodshed that would ensue on this journey north."

“So naturally she would keep the sacrifices to a minimum. That princess certainly has her own ideas.” The believer affirmed Pandora’s judgment, but still couldn’t help but ask curiously at the end of her sentence, “Pandora Reinhardt, when you said the name of that Far Eastern princess, didn’t you feel any doubt or curiosity at all?”

"If Mr. Hern is referring to the fact that I share the same surname as that princess from the Far East, then I can only say that even Mr. Hern hasn't figured it out yet, so why should I bother myself with this?"

"Hmph, don't have too high expectations of me. After all, I'm not some omnipotent being right now," the believer chuckled softly. "By the way, Pandora."

Suddenly, as if remembering a promise from the past, he put the wine cup back on the table and stood up.

On the coastal hill at night, sea fog filled the air. The winter sea carried dampness and brought a chilling cold. Fortunately, the three people present were not mortals, and had long since transcended the word "human," so it was no big deal.

"What is it, Mr. Hern?" The machine girl had witnessed his every move and heard his call, so she subconsciously asked in response.

"I've been putting it off since we came back from the sea, and I almost forgot I was going to teach you how to fly without any external force."

“Yes, Mr. Hern said he would teach me how to fly as a divinely created species.” Pandora nodded, recalling this past incident.

"Let me correct you again, I am not some divine creation, nor am I a local native. I am just an outsider." The believer smiled as she corrected her words. Then, his figure floated steadily and peacefully two feet off the ground.

Pandora was naturally aware of his actions, but even after witnessing the entire process, she was unable to decipher the underlying principles behind his current behavior of hovering above the ground based on the available information.

“Hearn, if I may be so bold, the flight ability you have demonstrated is completely different from the flight ability of the known Thranheim creatures. I have not even detected any trace of the four elements of earth, fire, wind and water.”

After expressing her confusion, Pandora looked at the believer with a curious gaze.

"what about now."

As the believer's voice faded, his back to the white moon shone with a bright blue glow around him. That familiar light appeared exceptionally soft in the false moonlight. It was no longer as intense as a burning flame as before, but had transformed into an invisible fluid, as gentle as the evening breeze.

"Now, close your eyes and tell me, what do you 'see' in the rest of your senses?"

Pandora closed her eyes as instructed by the believer, and after a moment, she asked softly.

"Mr. Hearn, are you still there?"

"of course."