Whoong.
A desolate city I had once entered.
The void wind blowing through and the foggy surroundings…
It was through this feeling of déjà vu that I became aware I had seamlessly entered the dream I had the previous night.
I thought it was merely by losing consciousness that one could enter such a state. Should I be thankful to my brother for this experience?
“Pheloi! Are you here? Pheloi!”
Regardless of anything else, finding Pheloi was the priority.
As I crossed the ruins with that sole thought, I spotted a shadow standing amidst the fog.
Was it Philoi?
“Chuckle. You’ve finally entered.”No, the body was too withered for a normal human.
An old corpse draped in black rags.
A being that could be summed up in a single sentence, and one I recognized as well.
“…Gorgon Zola.”
More precisely, a mass of will replicating his memories, a curse he had implanted in me.
“You needn’t be so wary. Right now, I can’t exert any power over you.”
The reason his voice felt particularly weak wasn’t only because I had resisted his curse for three months and maintained consciousness.
Just seeing him was enough to understand that.
“Quite a fierce child you are. At first, I left you alone, thinking I’d be helping you grow, but once you directly rejected me, you said I was useless and discarded me, didn’t you?”
Dust dispersed from the tips of his slowly raised hand.
The disintegration of his flesh, manifested in the mind, signified his diminishing power.
Yes, even if left alone, he would disappear before long.
“Where on earth did you pick up such a monstrous being?”
But even as he became aware of his impending demise, his voice still carried a sense of interest.
Though merely a curse, it was an assessment by one of the Four Knights, considered one of the greatest calamities to humanity.
It wasn’t something to be taken lightly by a mere foreigner like me.
“…Where is Pheloi?”
Yet, my priority remained unchanged.
Recalling the child who had innocently laughed in my arms, I asked without hesitation, and soon Gorgon began to gather himself and turn to leave.
“Come along. I’ll tell you about my hometown and take you to where that child is.”
“…Hometown?”
“It won’t harm you. It should be a story that helps you understand the child.”
Gorgon Zola strode through the fog-engulfed, abandoned city.
His steps to the ruined castle at its center were without the slightest hesitation.
As if this desolate city, thought to have no ties to him, were his ‘hometown’ he mentioned.
“Do you know of the Kingdom of Briton?”
We reached the audience chamber after arriving inside the ruined castle.
The chairs positioned there lacked both grandeur and elegance.
Only a heaviness that faintly recalled past authority remained.
“…Coincidentally, I don’t know much about the history of this world.”
“Right, you’re from another world.”
Muttering understandingly, Gorgon Zola stared at the two chairs placed before him.
“Briton IV… His fame was so widespread that even the peasants on the rural outskirts knew of him. He focused solely on politics for the people and preserving the grand history and traditions of the nation.”
The fourth king of Briton.
If he was the owner of this throne, was Gorgon Zola a vassal of his during his lifetime?
If this space was based on the memories of a person fundamental to Pheloi, was she also associated with the nation of Briton?
“But ironically, the country ruled by him was not always peaceful and livable.”
Gorgon Zola’s story continued, even as these questions arose.
“Before beings like you from other worlds came into this world, humanity was focused on acquiring more for their own forces.”
In the voice narrating the history of a nation, there was none of the playfulness felt at the first encounter.
Like an old man reminiscing about his life by a campfire.
Only bitterness was felt in that voice.
“…You mean wars among humans?”
“Wherever you went, there was war. Wherever you went, blood flowed, and people yearned for power. Those who lacked it were at the mercy of the greedy, losing their property, hometowns, even their lives and dignity.”
His gaunt hand stroked the throne.
Even that crumbled into dust, and Gorgon Zola, with his now-empty hand, let out a bitter laugh.
“In such times, a king who only knew his people, calling himself a ‘friendly force,’ might seem natural.”
“……”
“…But being such a foolish king, he felt more desperation than any leader in the era of war. He constantly pondered how to avoid war while training his people and sending them to the frontlines to protect the nation.”
Finally distancing from the throne, Gorgon Zola approached a sword that had fallen to the ground.
Picking up the sword with his still-existing hand, he stood it upright before his eyes and said,
“And finally, that opportunity arrived. A calamity so absurd, it made human wars meaningless.”
“Calamity?”
“Dragons. Monsters from legends suddenly appeared, destroying several nations entirely.”
Dragons.
Even when I came to this world, I only thought of them as mythical creatures. But now, such a notion seems trivial.
This world was full of calamities that could turn even a nation-crumbling monster into a mere footnote.
“Humanity, once poised against each other with swords, started to unite against the dragons after a few nations perished. The peace that the king, known as a friend during the times of war, so dearly wished for, finally came to fruition with a common enemy.”
It was ironic, in a way.
However, as I silently listened, I could vaguely guess what would follow in the tale.
To a king who wished for humanity’s well-being beyond his own nation, a calamity that required collective human strength to overcome must have seemed like an opportunity.
“And to seize that opportunity, the king summoned one of the mercenaries he had hired to protect his nation to his castle. A woman of uncertain nationality and origin, solely fixated on earning her wage and gaining merit through killings, was to be hailed as a hero.”
Not a war, but a legend.
A being of legend to be toppled not by an army, but by an individual, whose adulation would garner widespread support.
The formation of a group around this figure, diverting internal animosities, was evident even now, as society clung to the idea of heroes and mass-produced them.
“Even if she couldn’t slay the dragon, causing mutual destruction or a fatal wound would mean no more need for mutual killing…”
Clang!
With his last remaining hand crumbling, the sword granted to him fell to the ground lifelessly.
But Gorgon Zola’s gaze had already moved beyond, towards the space beyond the throne and the spear.
“Ironically, before the results could even be heard, countless calamities struck the world, rendering such matters meaningless. Even the kingdom that awaited her return started to crumble beyond repair due to an unknown plague.”
A city now empty, where only the vast grounds hinted at past prosperity, with only the desert winds blowing through.
Even the bodies left there probably eroded away with the passage of time.
“The king regretted his choice.”
Even the wise yet foolish king.
Everything he wanted to protect within his nation.
“Perhaps dreaming of uniting humanity against a common enemy, he brought upon an unbearable calamity that eventually led to the destruction of everything he strived to protect.”
Foolishly, so foolishly…
As he rambled on, the cracking of his face beneath the rags became visible.
“…In such a course of events, how could the story of the hero, who disappeared along with the existence of the dragon, ever be told to the world?”
Crumble, crumble.
The sound of disintegration echoed throughout his body.
As the dust from his disintegrated form began to pour out from under the rags he wore, the manifestation of the dead man’s memories began to express its bitterness towards me.
“You live in such a world. No matter how great the hero, no matter how long the history, in the end, nothing remains… At best, only the living corpses can barely maintain their existence.”
As the rags that covered his body completely settled on the ground, the fragments forming his body fluttered around, creating a black smoke.
“I sympathize with you. Despite having cultivated power akin to a calamity in a human body, you were chosen by the manifestation of one who was never recognized as a hero.”
The echo that followed from the ensuing darkness must have originated from sincerity.
As that too began to fade, I became aware that the smoke enveloping the surroundings had dissipated and looked around.
“This place…”
It was hell.
As soon as I stepped in, the thought struck me, for only devastation surrounded me.
Weapons stuck upside down everywhere, crows settling on bodies left amidst flowing blood, and faintly visible maggots moving…
Amidst this all-too-real tragedy, a sound that should never have been heard in this place began to reach my ears.
“Mom, where are you?”
A child.
A young child, who should never have set foot on this battlefield, sat alone among the corpses, crying.
“Why did you leave me? Why…?”
How that child survived such a tragedy, where the guardian might be.
Such questions should naturally arise, but in my mind, the thought of their importance was secondary.
The blood-stained armor she was wearing.
And the sword blade, so red that it could drown out the reflection of the blade, indicated that the girl was part of this tragedy.
“Answer me, Mom, why… why do I have to endure this?”
Yet, the disparity originating from the sorrowful cry of that mouth.
Could this indicate that it was merely a part of a nightmare?
Whoosh!
At that moment, a sandstorm surged again, obstructing my view, and the metallic stench hanging in the air choked my breath.
Instinctively, to resist the flow, I reflexively stepped forward.
With that action, the wind that had engulfed my face vanished, and I felt a cold dampness envelop my feet.
Splash.
Yes, the moisture enough to fill my ankles had now completely surrounded me.
Could it be a pool of blood I had stepped into?
No, when I actually opened my eyes, all I saw was a pool of water stretching to the horizon.
“When the battle ends…”
The girl in front of the water addressed me.
“After the battle, I would submerge myself in armor in a lake near the battlefield. Only then could I wash away the filth on my sword and armor.”
Despite it being the same voice as the girl who had been wailing before.
It was infinitely cold and blunt.
“…Pheloi?”
“Hello, Daddy.”
A girl who had grown remarkably compared to last night’s dream…
No, it was an individual that could be called a young soldier, welcoming me there.
“I wanted to be a cute daughter in front of Daddy, but my memory returned faster than I thought.”
Someday she might become a hero, but her start was just as a girl abandoned in an era of war.
“…I’m truly sorry.”
A scene that seemed like a fragment torn right out of the hellish landscape I had passed before.
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