"Just what the hell are you?!"
Facing Persson, I opened my mouth, trying somehow to defuse the hostile atmosphere.
"My name is Noah. I should at least have a proper name, so that’s what you can call me."
Persson, still furrowing his brow as though he had a headache, asked after hearing my answer.
"You... how old are you?"
"Let’s see... hold on. I turned thirty-two this year."
An utterly dumbfounded look crossed Persson’s face when he heard my age.
"You are absurdly young. What the hell are you doing on a battlefield?"
"Can’t you see? I’m fighting."
"...Whose side are you fighting for?"
"Uh... my own?"
"Haa... I have heard rumors about you for a long time. A ghost that appears on battlefields anywhere in the world and runs wild."
"Haha... I am rather promising, aren’t I?"
At those words, Persson’s expression hardened.
"So I looked through the records. You killed them without distinguishing between enemy and ally."
"Uh... there is some room for misunderstanding there..."
"You kill people simply because you enjoy it."
"..."
A brief, heavy silence passed.
Without a word, Persson rummaged inside his clothes and drew out a suspicious dagger that radiated an uncanny presence.
The instant I saw its silver gleaming blade, a scream erupted from the depths of my soul.
That was dangerous.
My immortal body could resurrect in an instant even if it were crushed down to a single cell,
but a cold instinct flashed through my mind, telling me that if I were stabbed by that dagger, I definitely would not come through unharmed.
For the first time since I was born, a thick terror of death trickled down my spine.
"Perpetuals like you must not interfere too deeply in human affairs."
"W-wait...!"
"If I leave you alive, you will become a dangerous evil in the future. So I must pull you up by the roots now."
Persson approached with the dagger in hand.
"Wait! Just wait a second, sir!"
I screamed and desperately crawled away, dragging legs that had only grown back halfway.
But Persson showed no mercy.
In an instant, he grabbed my hair and held me in place, then put force into driving that hideous blade into my chest.
I tried to use my spatial ability to escape the situation immediately,
but the terror I felt from that uncanny dagger kept me from concentrating, and I could not teleport easily.
Fuck... is this the end...?
I don’t want to die. There is still so much I want to enjoy...
That was when it happened.
"Let go of my uncle right now, you bastard!"
A tiny child burst from the gap in the collapsed building where I had been hiding, wailing at the top of his lungs.
With his face smeared with tears and snot, the child rushed Persson and began wildly pounding his sturdy leg with his tiny hands.
Persson’s eyes wavered in confusion, unable to comprehend what was happening.
Only then did he notice the people cautiously emerging from the darkness of the building I had crawled out of.
Every one of them was an innocent civilian who had missed their chance to evacuate,
and had been trapped, hiding in the middle of the battlefield.
They ran outside and shouted at Persson in Russian.
They wailed, begging him not to kill me,
and some elderly people even trained old shotguns on Persson, trying to stop him.
The gaze of Persson, who had resolved to root out a future evil before it could grow, shook violently.
He realized that he had judged the situation entirely wrong.
At the same time, revulsion flooded him at the realization that he was committing the same self-righteous act as "that man," whom he had despised so deeply.
Persson let out a heavy sigh and abruptly released the hand that held my hair.
"Cough... F-fuck, you’re letting me live?"
Freed by a hair’s breadth from death’s threshold, I panted harshly in relief.
"Uncle!"
As soon as Persson released me, the child who had been hitting his leg rushed to my fallen body and began to cry.
This was the little kid I had been protecting for a while, left alone on a battlefield without parents or family.
I gently stroked the head of the child as he sprawled over me and sobbed his heart out.
"You crazy little brat. Didn’t I tell you that when this happens, you should stay quiet and hide without doing a damn thing?"
"I don’t know! I don’t know about that!"
"The hell you don’t. You are sharp enough when it comes to reading a situation."
Watching our exchange, Persson put the uncanny dagger back inside his clothes and spoke bitterly.
"...Let’s talk."
I was still afraid of him, but I led him inside the building to clear up the misunderstanding.
When we entered the half-collapsed building, Persson’s expression became slightly strange.
Unlike its brutally ruined exterior, the inside had been neatly arranged so that countless civilians could survive safely.
All these people had been surviving in this hellish war zone on food and necessities that I had secretly brought in through my spatial passage ability.
Looking around, Persson murmured quietly.
"A government building constructed during the Soviet era. Its protective walls are thick."
"Yes. There was nowhere else safe enough to hide these people right away. By the way, do you like Maxim Coffee? The locals go crazy for this yellow instant coffee and Choco Pies."
"...Just give me whatever."
Persson dropped heavily into an old chair at the table.
I brought over a tray piled with two steaming cups of Maxim Coffee and Choco Pies, then sat across from him.
A brief silence.
Persson was the first to speak amid the awkward air.
"First, I shall introduce myself. I am Olanius Persson. A Perpetual like you."
As he turned the heavy coffee cup in his hands, he calmly told me when he had been born,
and how he had lived through the long history of humanity until now.
He started with how he had brought down the Tower of Babel, then spoke of participating in the Argonaut expedition and witnessing Orpheus confront the Sirens in person.
Especially impressive was the tale of how, before the Tower of Babel, he had clashed with Nessos—the Emperor—over Enuncia, the language of the universe,
then stabbed the Emperor with his sword and briefly used Enuncia to bring down the Tower of Babel.
I listened to his grand tales of old so engrossedly that I lost track of time.
As our conversation continued, our coffee cups had somehow naturally turned into vodka glasses.
I realized that he was a far better storyteller than I had expected.
He was a man who had lived through human history itself; there was no way his store of stories could ever run dry.
We drank vodka with kimchi stew in an aluminum pot, which I had brought directly from a Korean street-food bar, as our accompaniment.
Only at dawn, once the alcohol had warmed us and the mood had grown rather friendly, did Persson finally stop talking.
At last, I was able to tell him about my past.
I told him everything: my gutter-like childhood in Korea, the moment I awakened after being struck to death with a hammer and coming back to life,
the change in my heart that had once been filled with murderous intent, and why I wandered such dangerous battlefields as a mercenary in the first place.
Persson listened to my story in silence, then set down his glass and offered a bitter assessment.
"Because of that twisted, prematurely ruined life... your mind, too, has been warped into something unsound."
"Haha, I can’t deny it. Anyone would say my childhood was fucking grimdark itself."
After sinking into deep thought for a long while, Persson looked at the civilians sleeping soundly in a far corner and asked,
"What do you intend to do with those people?"
"I’m training people to pass through my ability, [Passage], so I can get them somewhere safe. It’s difficult because the passage was only meant for me to go back and forth through, but I think I’ll succeed soon."
"Has its safety been verified?"
At that question, I grinned and flung open a door to one side.
Inside were five Russian soldiers I had personally captured alive, bound extremely tightly.
"Just so you know, these bastards were human garbage who caught a mother and daughter trying to flee and were about to do unspeakable things to them, so there is absolutely no problem using them for live experiments."
"I see."
Persson looked at the state of the room, nodded, and understood at once.
Persson looked directly at me and spoke in a serious tone.
"You are undoubtedly extraordinary. Over all my long years, I have met countless Perpetuals like us, but those with such a special ability—who can fold space as effortlessly as you—are truly few enough to count on one hand. How far you will grow... even I cannot begin to estimate it."
I snorted and took a bite of a Choco Pie.
"Come on, don’t oversell me. Just earlier, when you pulled out that knife, I got so scared that I couldn’t even use my ability and just sat there trembling."
"That is because you have had no mentor by your side to draw out that power and teach you how to control it properly."
Persson stepped closer to where I sat and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
There was no playfulness in his eyes. He was completely serious.
"I will be your mentor, lost young Perpetual."
At that moment, a strange feeling rose in my chest, warm and deeply stirring.
Ah, do not misunderstand. I am not into that at all.
Still, it did not feel bad.
Something like the intense vitality I felt on the battlefield, perhaps?
A being who had, if only briefly, once stood alongside that Emperor in the history of humanity was offering to become my teacher.
There was no reason to refuse.
I happily accepted with a broad smile.
"Great! But aside from being a Perpetual, what abilities do you have, Master? Can you use some incredible magic?"
Persson fell into deep silence for a moment at my question, then answered with an extremely solemn expression.
"...I have a psychic ability that makes my eyelids twitch when a psyker is nearby."
"What the hell? You are just a plain old man with no abilities?"
Smack!
Before I could even finish speaking, his iron-like fist struck the crown of my head with brutal force.
My immortal body felt nothing even when my head was smashed apart by a hammer, but the weight of his hand was fierce.
I rubbed my head as though it hurt and grinned.
"I’m joking, I’m joking! I look forward to learning from you."
Persson stared blankly at me, then let out a deep sigh and pressed a hand to his forehead.
"...I already want to take back what I said. This may have been the greatest mistake of my thousands of years of life."
And so, I became the one and only mentee of the great Perpetual, Olanius Persson.
Under his guidance, I began to stride boldly into humanity’s radiant and cruel history.
Ahahhahahahahaba intast regret ahahahahahah