Fodoüi's life had been one of kicking others down.
The weak existed to be exploited. The strong existed to be cast aside.
That was how he had lived.
He never resorted to crime or fraud. His money was earned through means that posed no legal problems whatsoever.
He siphoned that money from the weak and snatched it from the strong.
Then he rushed off to his next scheme.
Fodoüi himself had no particular desire for money.
It was simply the way he had been born—making money was his work, and it was his life. His way of being was like a gear in the machinery that kept the economy turning. Fodoüi, as a person, was a device for moving money around.
She gave salvation to the weak, and extended a hand even to former strong who had fallen from grace.
Fodoüi, who spent his days as a joyless money-making machine, became curious about a being so utterly unlike himself.
What kind of saint could she possibly be?
Fodoüi donated a portion of his considerable wealth to the Church of Sariel.
Through that channel, he managed to arrange a meeting with her.
What he found there was a being even more machine-like than himself.
She had no emotions. She simply carried out her given mission in a flat, detached manner.
There was nothing of the saint Fodoüi had imagined.
His impression of Sariel was that she was a machine.
A machine with no will of its own, operating solely according to a pre-loaded program.
More precisely, perhaps she was a machine that was functioning normally despite having a bug.
What Fodoüi felt upon seeing Sariel was pity.
He felt an inexpressible sorrow for this being who could not understand the rationale behind her own actions, yet who carried out her mission with quiet resignation all the same.
But that didn't mean he could do anything about it.
Whether Fodoüi pitied her or not, Sariel would remain a cog in the world's machinery.
And Fodoüi, who was himself nothing more than one such cog, was powerless to change that.
Even so, he wanted to do something.
That was the moment the man who had always been a cog decided, for the first time in his life, of his own volition, to defy the world.
From that day on, Fodoüi began attending at Sariel's side.
The public lapped it up with colorful stories—how that monstrous moneylender had been purified by the radiance of the goddess. But Fodoüi was not the kind of man who cared about such talk.
He stayed as close to Sariel as he could, and tried to learn who she truly was.
He sought to know her, and to find a way to set her free.
But it wasn't enough.
No matter what he did, Fodoüi was not enough.
His awareness, his emotions, his knowledge, his shared understanding—and above all, his time.
To comprehend a god, the time allotted to a human like Fodoüi was far too short.
He could not understand Sariel. He could not free her.
Realizing this, Fodoüi began plotting to have someone else carry on his work.
Someone who could understand a god, who could remain at Sariel's side for the long ages to come and support her.
Such a person.
And then, before Fodoüi's eyes, a dragon appeared—bristling with rage.
No one but him.
Fodoüi knew it instinctively.
A god who expressed the emotion of anger so clearly.
To possess emotions meant to think in ways closer to humanity.
And yet, at the same time, a god.
There was no one who fit the criteria better.
And so Fodoüi deliberately showered that dragon—Gyurie—with harsh, cutting words, and tested him.
To see if he was a man worthy of entrusting with Sariel.
The supreme act of arrogance: a mortal testing a god.
If it cost him his life, he had no complaints.
His own eyes had simply gone dim. That was all.
Yes—he would steel himself for it.
In the end, Gyurie showed a willingness to come closer than Fodoüi had ever expected.
Fodoüi held onto hope.
That someday, Gyurie would free Sariel from the wedge of her mission.
It wouldn't be easy, but if, over the long stretch of years, he could slowly loosen the bonds of Sariel's heart, that would be enough.
Fodoüi believed that Sariel had more than fulfilled her role as a cog.
When he looked back through history, he could see figures resembling Sariel appearing and disappearing at frequent intervals.
Their endings were almost invariably tragic.
What they did with good intentions ended up tumbling, over and over, toward worse and worse outcomes.
As though dragged down by a bottomless well of malice.
That, Fodoüi felt, was the very ugliness of humankind.
And yet, Sariel—saying it was for the sake of her mission—had never stopped serving the world, without rest or pause.
All the while being torn to shreds.
So battered, she didn't even realize she was wounded.
That dogged persistence in carrying out her mission was nothing short of pitiful.
She should have been allowed to rest by now.
But Fodoüi had no way to stop her.
Neither with words nor with actions could he move Sariel's heart.
He simply didn't have the time needed to reach the place where her heart resided.
Deep within Sariel, there did exist something faintly resembling a heart.
She was not a machine without any heart at all.
That was precisely why she was wounded.
And that was precisely why she could be saved.
But that heart, from a human perspective, was terribly small.
Her emotional fluctuations were minute—barely there at all.
Fodoüi could not appeal to those emotions.
He could not evoke the kind of emotional turbulence that would make her abandon her mission.
And so, he would entrust her to another.
There was no need for her to abandon her mission, even.
He simply didn't want Sariel to be hurt any further.
Her emotional fluctuations were slight, but even so, the wounds had accumulated over the long passage of time.
If only someone could heal those wounds. That was all he wanted.
"Leave the rest to the young ones. Though I suppose I'm far younger myself, when you think about it."
Fodoüi sent Gyurie off to Sariel's side.
He felt like a matchmaking agency clerk.
He prayed to a god he didn't even believe in, wishing the two of them happiness in the future.
But that prayer was trampled underfoot by human malice.
Trampled by a malice that knew no bottom.