“—When yer strong, you’ve gotta pick yerself back up no matter what happens. Someone spat in your face? Someone humiliated you? Someone stole somethin’ from you? You get right back up!”
They’d refused to let Bete leave the room until he explained the reasoning behind his constant berating of others, and after a few of his usual exchanges of blows with Gareth, he’d finally opened up, ignoring the wounds he’d incurred and gulping down his drink.
“Because that’s what it takes. You’ve gotta lose someone. You’ve gotta lose a part of yourself. You’ve gotta make a mistake…You’ve gotta get to the point where you can’t forgive yourself. Only then do the strong change,” he’d continued, slamming his glass down on the table to the surprised shock of Riveria and the others. “But the weak will always be weak! No matter what happens, those failures just sit there and yuk it up! They’ll always be weak—always!! Living trash until the day they get torn to pieces!!”
The eyes of Lefiya and the other elves widened as Riveria relayed the wolf’s words. At the same time, they realized the mistake they’d made.
Bete’s unruly conduct, his heavy-handed principles of meritocracy, had been nothing more than the ultimate shakedown. A ritual for digging up and forcing adventurers to face the wounds of their past. An awakening that would send them upward.
They were words of abusive encouragement that would kick the truly weak to the side.
An inhuman, arrogant, and cruel divider of the strong from the weak.
A special privilege that, according to him, could be bequeathed only by the strong.
“…But there…there must have been a better way of doing that! What he does goes far beyond ‘socially inept’! Not everyone is…going to have that…strong of a spirit…” Alicia asserted.
A Level 4 in Loki Familia’s reserve crew, she’d likely hit a wall in her abilities herself; she was forced to swallow her tears and keep pushing forward no matter how her heart threatened to break. Lefiya, too, found it hard to condone Bete’s harsh criticism. Riveria, however, simply nodded.
“Indeed. You’re right about that, Alicia…But there is more than that behind his actions. He also greatly dislikes…when those whom he refers to as ‘weaklings’ take the field, so to speak.”
He wanted to ensure only those with the proper qualifications joined the fight, she explained.
And at least to Bete, he’d already come up with the solution.
The high elf’s thin voice, laden with pity, faded into the rain outside the window.
“Would you like to know what he said…? When I criticized him for pushing his own values on others?” she asked with a sad smile, the Bete in her memories playing out across her eyes.
“You gonna say the same thing once they’re dead, huh?
“You’d rather they end up dead than get their ‘feelings’ hurt, huh?
“It’ll be too late once they’re ripped to pieces!!”
Even Bete knew just how tactless he was.
“RuuuuuuuaaaaaaAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!!”
Letting out a mighty roar, he went from assassin to assassin, his attacks a ceaseless rampage. Kicking, clawing, mauling, he allowed his rage to carry him, not stopping until every shadowy figure in the restoration zone was nullified.
And at the forefront of his mind throughout every swipe of his limbs were the images of his past. The faces of every adventurer he’d seen die before his eyes, Leene and Lena included.
He couldn’t stop screaming.
Why?
Why did they have to be so weak?
Why did they have to stay so weak?
Why didn’t they try to get stronger?
How could they sit there, laughing, in a world where only the strongest survived?
Why, when such a cruel fate awaited them, didn’t they—?
The despair and anguish were taking control of him now. Bete had been beaten down by the weak for too long, and there was only one solution in his mind.
He had to train, become even stronger, and protect them.
He wouldn’t lose anyone. Never again.
But even that was just something he told himself.
Because no matter how strong he became, no matter how hard he tried to protect them, the weak still slipped through his fingers, as impossible to hold on to as a fistful of sand.
That left him with only one choice—he had to push them away.
He ridiculed them, laughed at them, hurt them.
The only ones allowed on the battlefield were those who could howl back at scorn of the strong.
The weak had to be able to howl.
If not, if they couldn’t change—their corpses would only keep piling up.
Like his father. Like his mother. Like his sister. Like his childhood friend. Like her.
Like the kindhearted nurse who’d healed his wounds.
Like that Amazonian girl.
And so Bete would keep screaming.
He would keep scoffing, taunting, deriding any weaklings who tried to set foot on the battlefield.
“He…just didn’t want anyone to die?” Tiona asked, half in shock, after hearing Finn’s response.
“What an idiot! As if he can just keep that from happening!” Tione cut in almost instantly, her voice ringing off the walls of the sewer.
If that was the case, then it was Tiona and Tione who were the disillusioned ones when it came to death. The two who had taken more lives than they could count within the prison located in their home country of Telskyura, and who had since then been protecting this two-person world they shared.
As the rest of the party stared on in bewildered astonishment, Tione couldn’t hide her anger. “I mean, really! How the hell does he think he’s gonna be able to protect everyone, huh? Even people he doesn’t even know!”
“No…I don’t believe that’s what he’s trying to do,” came Finn’s soft response. And as Tiona, Tione, and the rest of the group looked toward him curiously, a wry smile formed on his face. “Quite the opposite. The reason he can’t stop his abusive tirades is more…”
“…selfish, I would say. And not just a little bit, either.”
Loki mused with a smile identical to Finn’s.
She was on the first floor of Babel Tower, the large, circular hall bordered by countless doors. Around her, the members of Loki Familia who had been tasked with guarding the Amazons through the night—Raul, Anakity, and the others—attempted to deduce the true meaning behind her words.
“What do you mean by…selfish?” Raul asked.
“Whenever the lad sees someone weak by his standards, he catches a glimpse of his own past…and his former self. It ticks him off, ye might say,” Gareth, who had been put in charge of the Babel task force, responded with a stroke of his beard. He’d traded blows with Bete more often than anyone else in all of Loki Familia, which was what gave him the authority to surmise what even Bete couldn’t bring himself to say.
“Ticks…him off…?” Aki repeated dejectedly.
“What? Ye didn’t take him as the charitable sort, did ye? As if! It’s as Loki just said. The boy’s own lack of social skills makes him all the more contentious,” Gareth continued, tossing the catgirl a smile. But the smile quickly disappeared as he looked toward the door.
The far-off howl of a werewolf came trickling in once again from far away.
“Nay…that lad hasn’t changed a wee bit since the moment I met him…” he murmured.
Even in a group, weaklings are still weaklings.
Living as a weakling means having everything stolen from you, leaving you to blubber and snivel your life away.
I’m not gonna be like that. And I’m not gonna let anyone around me be like that, either.
So shut up with your whimpering and your moaning and your crying.
They were words that had been echoing in Bete’s heart for as long as he could remember. Even now, as he raced
throughout those dark alleyways, they continued. Whether they were simply random memories or regret at the women in his life he’d let die, he didn’t know.
“…Even that rabbit brat stood his ground.”
The words left his mouth before he even realized it.
A murmur melting into the pouring rain.
He remembered that night and the adventurer he’d ridiculed while drunk as a skunk.
And how that boy hadn’t liked to be called weak.
It was that tiny thought that had brought the boy to tears, made him rise to his feet and throw off the shackles of his weakness.
That fight against the minotaur had shaken Bete to his core. Ashamed of himself, incensed that he could be losing to a chump like him—and yet, though he hated to admit it, a little excited, as well.
That was the first time in his life Bete had found himself in awe of someone weaker than him. It was almost like he’d been waiting for him, for that gallant figure to come into his life.
Because even Bete understood.
Not everyone could become a warrior. Not everyone could become an adventurer.
They couldn’t be Aiz and the others. They couldn’t be that boy.
And yet, in spite of all that, Bete couldn’t bring himself to abide weakness.
To stay weak was a sin. Evil, almost. To sit around laughing and smiling, then to weep, collapse, bawl, and scream every time they lost something. Bete hated those screams most of all. And he refused to accept them, the same as he refused to accept the young wolf from his past.
He’d heard so many screams by this point. Too many.
They needed to go away.
And if they weren’t prepared to do that, he’d make them.
Shameful powerless chumps like them didn’t deserve to live.
The battlefield recognized none but the strong—.
“It seems to me…that Bete just can’t give ’em up. That’s why he keeps on scoffin’ and ridiculin’ ’em,” Loki mused as the rest of the group looked on in silence. Though she might have been overthinking things, there was something about her voice that made it hard to doubt her theory. “Then, when they don’t change, he gets pissed. Starts fights. Even though it’d be much easier on him to just let it be.”
This claim shocked Raul and the other onlookers.
Certainly, Bete’s tirades never stopped. Picking on them, tossing insults—never once did he take a break from giving them a hard time. So if what Loki was saying was true…
Then his actions were really just a completely maladroit form of encouragement.
Acrimonious cheerleading that even Bete himself hadn’t realized he’d been doing.
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Raul asked, tears welling up in his eyes thanks to this glimpse into Bete’s soul. “Then, he was doing the same for Leene and the others? Telling them…Telling them that even after they’re reborn, whoever, whatever they are, that he doesn’t want to lose them again…?!”
Hearing this was enough to make the animal person Cruz and the human Narfi hang their heads in shame. Even Aki had her gaze pointed at the ground, lip between her teeth.
Bete had always pushed the weak away. Even when looking after his own companions, he was nothing but himself, to the point of violence. Almost as if that was the only thing he knew.
As Raul and the others pressed Loki for an answer, she merely shook her head softly.
“Because you wouldn’t have understood,” she murmured, lips pursed almost morosely. “No matter how much we may say we get ’im, none of us ever will. Hell, Bete himself prolly doesn’t understand.”
“What’s more, that lad’s philosophy’d be naught but a nuisance to most others, aye?…The whole negative-over-positive-reinforcement schtick,” Gareth continued.
Loki raised her head. “Havin’ said that, there is one thing for certain…” she started, almost to herself, as she made her way over to the door to look up at the night sky laden with tears.
“That fang of his isn’t a fang at all. It’s…”
—The fang on his cheek was throbbing.
Burning, scorching, almost as though it were crying tears of blood.
“Goddammit…!!”
Hand against his cheek, he ran, abandoning all other thoughts as he pushed himself faster and faster.
Reinforcements had arrived, and as they came screaming at him, he launched them into the wall, one by one. The blood burst like geysers from their mouths and painted him and his fang a sanguine red.
“Have you figured out what that fang of yours means, Bete?”
Loki had asked him earlier.
But Bete had already figured that out long, long ago.
Its true form was so obvious.
Bete’s fang wasn’t a fang at all.
It was a scar.
Beneath that lightning bolt–shaped tattoo on his cheek was the scar that had started all this. The very first wound he’d ever received, when he’d first learned about this dog-eat-dog world of cruelty and had been beaten down by it, that he’d carved into this form on his face.
The fang that his father had long taught him to polish had cracked long ago.
And now that wound was proof of his weakness.
His fang, his strength, was nothing but a disguise.
Strength and weakness combined to form that un-healing scar. The proof of his origins, carved right within his own starving body. A blood oath he’d made to himself, that he would devour the strong and press ever forward.
Every time Bete felt his own weakness, he grew stronger.
When he lost his family, his sister, his childhood friend, her, his companions.
Each one of those times, Bete had cried—howled.
And then he’d rid himself of that weak flesh and devoured new strength.
His wounds tormented him, chiseled him, carved away at the weaknesses in his body. And with every person he lost, they grew. The blood spilled became his strength, and the Bete of the past hadn’t even noticed.
He was a wolf sewn from wounds.
A powerful being built from the lives of the weak he’d abandoned.
“Grrruuuaaagh!”
“Ghngh…! Urrraaaagh!!”
He repelled an incoming strike with his armguard. Sparks flying, he sent the soft body of his attacker flying with a single punch. Again and again, his hands, claws, and fangs were painted with blood only to be washed clean by the pouring rain.
Bete’s fang couldn’t protect anyone.
Bete’s fang knew nothing but pain and suffering.
Bete was capable of nothing but inflicting pain. His strength was nothing but a sham.
But still he would continue to bare his fang of lies, the wounds beneath it piling ever higher.
Hurting himself, hurting others, all because he refused to accept their weakness.
Howling at the weak, devouring the strong.
Until that gaping jaw of his was finally ripped from his face.
“Protect that jaw of yours—and that fang—at all costs, yes?”
Víðarr had been right.
Bete could do nothing but inflict pain. He could do nothing but howl.
Nothing but push people away. Nothing but gripe, complain, and demand.
Weaklings should all just disappear!
Doesn’t it annoy you, too?!
Howl, why don’t you?!
All he could do was wait for the howl of the weak.
“RUUUUUUUAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!”
Heart and throat trembling, Bete roared.
“Bete…”
Aiz’s feet came to a stop at the sound of that lonely howl.
“You’re strong. That’s all that matters, so…don’t you change.”
All of a sudden, the meaning behind those words Bete had told her so long ago became clear.
He’d been baring a part of his heart to her, the way he mig
ht to a sister, to a lover, desperate not to lose someone else. A bumbling, graceless plea from a bumbling, graceless wolf.
Aiz stood there in front of the restricted restoration zone of the Pleasure Quarter and simply listened to that echoing cry.
Even the heavy rain was starting to wane, almost as though it had no tears left to shed.
“All of them…gone? That damn Vanargand. And even with the effects of the curse keepin’ him from healing all the way…He’s somethin’ else.”
The Evils base in Belit Babili was in an uproar.
None of the assassins who had been dispatched to take care of Bete had returned. Even the continuous lupine howl had faded into the shadows, as though signaling the subjugation of his prey.
But Valletta was undaunted, still wearing her ever-present smile as she gazed out across the shadow-strewn ruins of the Pleasure Quarter from the top floor of the palace.
“That lone wolf is even more riled up than I expected. If I don’t get my act together, Mister Big Bad Wolf’s gonna have that revenge of his after all.”
“L-Lady Valletta! We’ve completely run out of assassins! Wh-what should we do?!”
“Oh, stop being such a pussy! Clearly, runnin’ straight into his territory was a bad idea. So what do we do? We simply invite him over here, yes?” she hissed at the obviously flustered Thanatos Familia flunky next to her. Turning toward the group of robe-clad men, she jerked her chin toward the restoration zone outside the window.
“I really ruffled his fur back there. That guy wants us dead, and he wants to be the one to do it. We lure him over here and he’ll come whether he wants to or not…He’s really gone off his rocker this time, which gives us the advantage,” Valletta explained coolly, despite the fact that most of her playing pieces were gone.
The countless battles she’d already survived as an elite member of the Evils had given her a keen eye when it came to strategy like this. And what’s more, the power she wielded as a Level 5 was enough to place her among even Orario’s leading adventurers. There was no doubt about it—this villainous woman who’d gone up against Braver and the rest of his crew time and time again was one of the strong.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 8 Page 16