How to Survive in the Roanoke Colony-Chapter 13: Angel

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The man walks. He walks slowly with a sword pierced through his chest.

He walks toward the frightened English settlers and natives.

In the silence, the Spanish soldiers make way for him. No, they either follow him as if entranced or fall to their knees.

A Spanish soldier who collapsed to his knees speaks.

"Lo-Lord... Lord... forgive me... Fo-forgive me...!"

When the man's indifferent and detached gaze brushes past him, the soldier immediately trembles as if electrocuted and collapses.

"Lord, I have sinned greatly against you. Please forgive us sinners, these ignorant sinners...!"

"Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us... Lead us not into temptation..."

The Spanish soldiers wail and try to grab even the hem of his garment. When his recently regenerated fingers brush against his face, one man weeps like a baby.

"Lord, Lord...! Please, please!"

"Uwaaaaah...!"

However, the man only gives them fleeting glances without adding any words. He quietly continues, step by step, toward the English.

The Spanish, while trying not to interfere with his progress, desperately gather around him like children crying for their mother.

But where there are believers, there are always unbelievers among them.

"A-a-are you all crazy? How can some native mutt be the L-L-Lord! The Lord taking the side of the English! Mierda, that's impossible!"

A disbeliever staggers toward the man. Suddenly hearing that enraged shout, everyone's gaze turns cold, but the one who stopped from immediately striking down the disbeliever was...

"Stop."

...the man himself.

"Kuaaaaaagh!"

Everyone hesitates at the man's command. In that moment, the disbeliever finally draws his sword and swings it at him.

With that, the man starts up the chainsaw he was holding and immediately thrusts its blade into the disbeliever's neck.

Tutututung!

Sparks fly everywhere as the chainsaw's carbide blade grinds against the Toledo steel armor.

"..."

"..."

"..."

It was just for a moment.

The disbeliever's flesh and blood turn to mush, and he soon collapses.

Thud.

The man looks at the fallen corpse and slowly pulls out the sword that was pierced in his chest. After stabbing it into the ground, he looks around.

"...Are you afraid of me?"

Everyone flinches at the man's words. Not just the Spanish gathered nearby, but the English and even the natives who don't believe in Christianity.

And only then do they realize.

Just now, 'everyone' in this place understood what the man said.

To the Spanish, it seemed like he whispered in Spanish, to the English it seemed like he spoke calmly in English, and to the Algonquins it seemed like he spoke gently in Algonquin.

"Good... heavens..."

The last possibility that the miracle before their eyes could be false disappears. That's why the surviving Spanish cling more fervently, more desperately to the one who appeared before them.

"Stop... this."

And at that one word, they scatter in all directions as if light driving away darkness. Even while doing so, they sob and beg him not to abandon them.

After watching this scene for a while, the man first approached Eleanor. Eleanor, who was kneeling, sees his chest through his torn clothes.

His chest, white and clean without a single wound.

"Ah, ah... I dare ask forgiveness for my rudeness all this time..."

"You have never been rude to me, Eleanor."

Ah.

His voice comes to me.

Eleanor sobs looking at the ground, and the man wipes her tears and helps her up while saying:

"Those people..."

"Do-do you mean the Spanish?"

"...Please help them up. Gather the wounded, wash them clean, and bring them to the barn. I will take care of the rest."

"Bu-but, just now they tried to kill you..."

"Eleanor, I told you."

"..."

"If we need to find a reason for people to save people, isn't that too sad?"

"...Ah, aah."

"Please save them, Eleanor. Just as I saved you all."

"I-I'll help too!"

"Me too!"

While Eleanor holds the man's hand and cries, others stand up first and move toward the Spanish. They willingly lift up the arms and shoulders of enemies they were trying to kill just moments ago.

And another person approaches the man's side while kneeling.

"Mr. Hewet?"

"Yes, it's me. A sinful lawyer before you..."

"Be at peace."

"How, how can I be at peace now?"

"..."

"..."

Lawyer Thomas Hewet closes his mouth and gets up while trembling all over. Then he soon walks to where the excavator was billowing smoke until just now. The man follows behind him.

As he walks, Hewet carefully picks up the sword that was stuck in the ground, the sword that had pierced through the man's heart.

Then he approaches the soldier still trapped between the wire mesh and excavator and asks:

"What is your name?"

It was a trivial question, but the soldier wept at it.

"...Ró-Rómulo, from Seville..."

At those words, Hewet solemnly nods and raises the sword from earlier.

"...This holy sword belonged to Rómulo of Seville."

Then he takes the scabbard from the soldier's waist, sheathes it, and presents it to the man.

"And... now it is yours."

"...What are you doing?"

"This place is now holy ground, and this is a holy sword. Some here may become saints, and this sacred story will be endlessly recounted."

Hewet knelt again with shining eyes.

"So, I will ensure that every single thing of this moment is not forgotten. Neither that sword, nor the name of he who possessed it."

"..."

To Hewet's words full of emotion, the man only wiped the tears from the dying Rómulo's eyes.

"Don't cry."

"Si-sin..."

"Sin will be judged by the Lord in heaven. Are you afraid of the Lord?"

"...Ah!"

"Do not be afraid."

The man held Rómulo's hand.

"I will stay by your side."

"..."

"..."

Rómulo soon closed his eyes while crying.

He never opened those eyes again.

But he looked very peaceful.

Finally...

"I, I, I didn't know it would be like this..."

Manteo walks over slowly with his head bowed and falls to his knees. The other natives who followed him also cannot dare raise their heads out of fear.

"I repent...! Yes! I only received baptism but didn't truly believe in you! I believed we lived well for generations without believing in the Great Spirit the Europeans spoke of. But..."

Bang!

Manteo cries while pounding the ground.

"The English were all right. Please tell me. Are you truly the great god they serve? Or..."

"Shh."

"..."

"I am not a god. Just another created being."

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"..."

"..."

"..."

Only then do all those kneeling raise their heads to look at the man's face.

A man who was nothing.

Like Melchizedek from Genesis, with no father and no mother, a mysterious figure whose identity no one knows.

Nemo.

His name will not be forgotten. His traces will not disappear. The flame of faith ignited by him will never dim nor extinguish.

"...Eleanor?"

"Ah... yes?"

"Have all the patients been moved?"

"Yes, Lord Nemo!"

"Then let's go."

He who is furthest from the powers of death, the most noble on earth, who cares for enemies like family and cherishes wanderers like friends.

He shall be immortal.

Everyone here believed this without doubt.

==

...

...

...

First time I've killed someone in my life...

Phewww.

Calm down.

I washed the blood off my hands thoroughly and cleaned my tattered clothes with cold water. Between the bullet holes and sword tears, it's a mess. Will the clothes repair themselves after midnight too?

I grip the sink and look in the mirror for a moment.

More precisely, at my chest where my heart is.

"...Really clean."

The sensation of the blade piercing exactly through here is still vivid. I can't forget that feeling of all the blood draining from my body and the burning pain where I was pierced through.

The internal organs squirming and touching the blade, and that cold blade moved by and cutting through the hot blood and flesh inside...

Gulp.

I swallow again.

"Damn... so that's what it really means."

'O thou who shall be immortal beyond ages, now a new world calls to thee.'

'Immortal one, wilt thou become a pioneer of the new world in infinite blessing? Or wilt thou become a slave to fate?'

The opening text flickers before my eyes again. Somehow it kept going on about immortality and seemed suspicious but...

'...I didn't think it would literally mean this.'

It was 'immortality' in the literal sense. Not a metaphor or implication, just straight-up immortality.

I don't die.

Even if my heart is pierced, my arm is cut off, I'm shot.

I just realized this fact, and even experienced my first kill. What reason would there be to kill someone in 21st century Japan? In a country where violence and murder are rare, where guns are strictly controlled.

I wasn't in my right mind earlier.

With adrenaline coursing through my body, half-numb with fear and sense of reality, I wandered here and there. I said whatever came to mind and acted however I felt like... uh...

What did I do again?

First, well, I killed some soldier who was saying something to me. And when the soldier who stabbed me was crying with an expression of absolute agony, I comforted him a bit... right...

Then I treated the Spanish. Though treatment was just simple stuff like setting bones, applying splints, putting alcohol on wounds for disinfection, and giving antibiotics.

Literally just first aid.

But when I was wrapping bandages, what did that Spanish governor or whatever say?

...He cried, right?

...

...

...

"Ah! The Lord's love that embraces even enemies! How truly great! Oh, our savior...!"

"I-I will convert from Catholicism immediately! I, Vicente, have finally opened my eyes like the Apostle Paul, so please accept my repentance! Ah, Lord! Lord!"

...What did I answer?

"I didn't attack you because you're Catholic. Weren't there even natives who don't believe in Christianity on our side? Religion isn't the issue."

"Th-then... why..."

"If I had done nothing, the powerless English and natives would have died. And please stay still. Your wound will open."

So the governor's response was...

"Aaaaah! Aah! Aaaaaaaaah!"

...It wasn't in human words.

I'm honestly not sure if that was a shout of ecstasy or a groan of pain from the bandaging.

Others were roughly similar.

For normal patients, especially those who've never experienced modern medicine, you'd think they'd question these strange practices. But they just took the terribly bitter medicine while crying as if it were honey.

And while Eleanor and I were taking care of the patients, even though we told others to go rest, they all stubbornly refused to listen. Everyone kept praying outside the barn and sang hymns until their throats were raw.

Even when the natives, who didn't know what was what, performed some kind of traditional ceremony, the supposed Christians watched without saying a word. This scene of racial harmony...

...

Wait.

So what I've done up until now is...

1). Coming back from death.

2). Killing an unbeliever.

3). Comforting an enemy who stabbed me.

4). Treating soldiers who attacked me.

...

...

...

Come to think of it, that's how it went.

...Uh, uhhh?

I feel cold sweat pouring down my spine as if a faucet had been turned on.

What will everyone think of me now?

What's going to happen to me now?

What... am I?