Rest spent a restless night at the inn... Given the weight of the day's revelations, he could hardly have expected otherwise.
After his bath, he returned to his guest room and, having nothing else to do, turned out the lights. He lay in bed, half-wondering if Celestine might come to visit him, but the door remained shut. Before long, he settled in for the night.
Lady Celestine... just what was she playing at?
Rest lay staring into the darkness. Thinking it over, he doubted there was any hidden agenda behind her words. While she was a noblewoman to her core, she was, above all else, a woman of integrity. She wasn't the type to lie or use deception regarding something as monumental as marriage.
So she really is serious about this. And she’s already secured the consent of Viola and Primula... Seriously?
Whether he was realizing it for the first time or just realizing it late, the truth was undeniable: he had truly become a noble. He was already engaged to the Rosemary sisters, and now he was stepping into a political marriage that would create a polygamous household. It felt surreal to think he had risen to a status where such things were even possible.
This really is another world... the culture shock is incredible.
Despite his lingering confusion, his joy was greater. In his previous life, he had spent his time grinding away at part-time jobs to afford tuition while juggling family problems; he’d never had the emotional or financial leeway to date. Now, after a series of strange twists of fate, he was a nobleman. He had beautiful fiancées like Viola and Primula, and a perfect lady like Celestine was practically begging to join them. It was so perfect that he began to fear it was all a dream.
I’m glad I was summoned here. I really am. I’m definitely happier now than I ever was back in Japan.
As he lay there soaking in the feeling of contentment, the face of the woman he had spoken to earlier drifted into his mind.
I found happiness, but Shoko—the Queen Dowager—didn't.
Frederica Aiwood, the girl once known as Shoko Sanada, had yearned for her original home so desperately that she had tried to recreate it in a world of illusions. Having lost her family and her fiancé in this world, she had undoubtedly cursed the fate that brought her here.
That’s why she fell in with that strange, chunibyo-sounding group... Takfir Kahen.
An organization of reincarnated people separate from the Council of Sages. According to Shoko, they were an evil secret society that hated the god responsible for their reincarnation and sought to destroy the world out of spite.
They must have had such deep regrets about their old lives, or maybe they just had too many reasons to hate this new one.
They were the ones for whom another world reincarnation had been a failure. In manga and light novels, the protagonist always finds a way to start over and flourish, but reality was rarely that kind. There were those who never became heroes, failing to grasp the success and happiness that Rest now held. Takfir Kahen was likely a gathering of those very failures.
If I hadn’t met Viola and Primula, I might have just ended up hating my family and nothing else.
If he hadn't met them. If they hadn't loved him. If he hadn't been born to such a wonderful mother or met the Priest he admired... Rest knew all too well that he could have easily become someone who hated the world.
Was Gascoigne’s warning meant to keep me from joining them?
If Takfir Kahen truly intended to destroy the world, they were natural enemies to someone like Rest, who had finally found people worth protecting. One day, they would likely cross paths on the battlefield.
"Yawn..."
As his mind wandered, a wave of drowsiness finally overcame him. Rest stopped his ruminations and let his consciousness drift away into the world of dreams.