Ch.89Chapter 89. Hello, Dad.

-Whoosh.

A desolate city I had once set foot in.

The empty wind blowing through it and the fog surrounding it…

Through the sense of déjà vu I felt from it, I realized I had stably entered the dream I had last night.

To think I could enter just by losing consciousness. Should I be grateful to my brother for this?

“Pailoi! Are you here!? Pailoi!”

Whatever the case, finding Pailoi takes priority.

While crossing the ruins with that thought in mind, I discovered a shadow standing still in the midst of the fog.

Is it Pailoi?

“Heh heh. So you’ve finally come in.”

No, this is too withered to be a normal human.

An old dead man wrapped in black rags.

The figure that could be defined in that one sentence was someone I knew as well.

“…Gorgon Zola.”

More precisely, a mass of will that copied his memories, implanted in me as a curse.

“No need to be so wary. I can’t exert any power over you right now.”

The reason his voice seemed particularly weak wasn’t just because I had resisted his curse for three months while maintaining consciousness.

I could understand it just by looking at him.

“You’re quite a fierce child. At first I let you be, thinking I could help raise you, but when you directly rejected me, you immediately cast me out saying I was useless, didn’t you?”

Particles scattering from the tip of his raised hand.

The fact that the physical body manifested in this mind was decomposing meant that his power had weakened that much.

Yes, if left alone, he would disappear before long.

“I wonder where you picked up such a monstrous being.”

Yet despite being aware of his imminent disappearance, his voice carried a sense of interest.

Though just a curse, this was an evaluation from one of the Four Knights, considered the greatest calamities to humanity.

Not something that a trivial Foreign Laborer like me should take lightly.

“…Where is Pailoi?”

Yet my priority remained unchanged.

Recalling the child who had smiled innocently in my arms, I erased my hesitation and asked, and soon Gorgon began to compose himself and turn around.

“Follow me. I’ll tell you about my homeland and take you to where that child is.”

“…Homeland?”

“It won’t be bad for you. It might help you understand that child better.”

Gorgon Zola traversed the foggy abandoned city without hesitation.

Until we reached the abandoned castle at its center, there wasn’t a trace of reluctance in his steps.

As if this abandoned city, which I thought had no connection to him, was the “homeland” he mentioned.

****

“Have you heard of the Kingdom of Briton?”

The audience chamber we reached after entering the abandoned castle.

The chair there showed neither grandeur nor sophistication.

Only a heaviness that vaguely reminded one of past authority remained.

“…Coincidentally, I don’t know much about this world’s history.”

“Well, you are from another world.”

Gorgon Zola, muttering that he should understand that much, soon gazed at the two chairs placed before him.

“Briton IV… His reputation was so widely known that it reached even rural farmers at the edge of the kingdom, beyond his vassals and the residents of the royal city. A current king who devoted himself solely to politics for his people and preserving the country’s grand history and traditions.”

The fourth monarch of Briton.

If that was the owner of this throne, was Gorgon Zola one of his vassals in life?

If this space itself was based on the memories of the person who formed Pailoi’s foundation, then was she also a person belonging to the country of Briton?

“But ironically, the country under his rule couldn’t simply be called peaceful and good to live in.”

Gorgon Zola’s story continued even as such questions arose in my mind.

“Before people from other worlds like you flowed into this world, humanity was focused on taking more for their respective powers.”

His voice, telling the history of a country, showed none of the playfulness I had felt at our first meeting.

Like an old man sitting by a campfire, reminiscing about life.

Only bitterness could be felt in his voice.

“…You mean humans waged war against each other?”

“Everywhere was war. Everywhere blood flowed, everywhere people craving power increased, and those who couldn’t possess it were swayed by their greed, inevitably losing their property, homeland, and even their lives and dignity.”

The skinny hand caressing the throne.

Even that finally crumbled into powder, and Gorgon Zola, looking down at his now empty hand, let out a bitter laugh.

“In such an era, it was perhaps natural for a king who only cared about his people to call himself a ‘fool’.”

“……”

“…But because he was such a foolish king, he felt more desperate than any other leader in that era of war. Even while training his citizens and sending them to the front lines to protect the country, he endlessly pondered how to avoid war at any time.”

Finally moving away from the throne, Gorgon Zola approached a sword lying on the floor.

Picking it up with his hand that hadn’t yet disappeared, he held it upright before his eyes and spoke.

“And finally that opportunity came. An absurd calamity that could render the war between humans meaningless.”

“Calamity?”

“A dragon. A monster that had only appeared in legends suddenly appeared and completely destroyed several countries.”

Dragon.

Even when I first came to this world, it was considered a legendary being, but even if such a thing existed, it wouldn’t be much of a concern now.

This world is full of absurd calamities that can make even monsters capable of destroying a country with a breath seem trivial.

“Humanity, which had been pointing swords at each other, stopped fighting after several countries were annihilated and began to join forces to stop the dragon. The peace that the king called a fool in the era of war had so desperately wanted was finally formed only after a common enemy appeared.”

An ironic situation, if anything.

But as I listened silently, I could vaguely guess the story that would follow.

For a king who wished for the well-being of humanity beyond his own country, a calamity that could only be stopped by humanity joining forces would be seen as an opportunity in itself.

“And to seize that opportunity, the king summoned one of the mercenaries he had hired to protect his country to his castle. To elevate a woman who had only been obsessed with killing people for compensation and achieving merit, with unclear nationality and origin, to the status of a hero.”

Not war, but legend.

An individual, not an army, defeats a being that only appears in legends, and by exalting them, they gain the support of all people.

Rallying groups around that point and making them forget their hostility towards each other – this could be inferred even now, just by looking at the obsession with the existence of heroes and their mass production.

“Even if she couldn’t defeat the dragon but only caused mutual destruction or inflicted a fatal wound, he thought there would be no more need to kill each other…”

-Clang!

As his remaining hand shattered and the sword finally fell limply to the floor.

But Gorgon Zola’s gaze had already turned away from it, directed beyond the window beyond the throne.

“Ironically, before hearing the result, countless calamities descended upon this world, making such things meaningless. Even the kingdom waiting for her return began to irreparably break down as an unknown plague spread.”

A vast, empty city that only teaches that it once prospered, where now only sand winds barely blow.

Even the bodies abandoned throughout it have probably weathered away and disappeared with the passage of time.

“The king regretted his choice.”

A wise but foolish king.

The country he wanted to protect, and everything that existed within it.

“Perhaps because he dreamed of uniting humanity through a common enemy, an unbearable calamity covered the world, and he thought that it ultimately drove everything he wanted to protect to ruin.”

Foolishly, foolishly…

Even as he muttered such laments, I could see the face beneath the rags cracking.

“…In such a flow, how could the story of a hero who disappeared along with the existence of the dragon be passed down to the world?”

-Crumble, crumble.

The sound of decomposition echoing from all over his body.

Following that, as powder poured from beneath the rags he wore, the phantom who inherited the memories of the dead began to express bitterness towards me.

“This is the world you live in. No matter how great a hero, no matter how proud a long history, in the end nothing remains… At best, only moving corpses can barely maintain their existence.”

Finally, as the rags covering his body completely sank to the floor, the fragments forming his body scattered around, creating a black haze.

“I pity you. Despite cultivating power comparable to calamities in a human body, you were chosen by the phantom of someone who wasn’t recognized as a hero.”

The echo heard from within the darkness that followed was surely born from sincerity.

Even as that gradually faded, I looked around, realizing that the haze hiding the surroundings had disappeared.

“This is…”

Hell.

That’s what I thought as soon as I set foot in it, as only wretchedness existed around me.

Weapons stuck upside down everywhere, crows settling on corpses abandoned amidst flowing blood, and the faint movement of maggots…

As I felt chills from the all-too-realistic tragedy, a sound that should never be heard in this place began to reach my ears.

“Mom, where are you?”

A child.

A child who should never have set foot on this battlefield, sitting alone on the field of corpses, crying.

“Why did you leave me behind? Why…”

How this child survived such a tragedy, where the guardian was.

Though such questions would naturally arise, what came to my mind first was the thought that none of that mattered.

The blood-stained armor worn on that body.

And the blade, so red it buried even the reflection of the sword’s light, taught me that this girl was part of this tragedy.

“Answer me, Mom. Why… why do I have to suffer like this?”

Yet the dissonance arising from the sorrowful crying from those lips.

Is this just part of a nightmare?

-Whoosh!

At that moment, the sand wind that swept over again blocked my view, and the smell of iron in it choked my breath.

When I instinctively took a step forward to resist the flow.

With that action, the wind that had covered my face disappeared, and I felt a cold dampness covering my feet.

-Splash.

Yes, moisture enough to reach my ankles had filled the surroundings.

Could I have entered a pool of blood?

No, what I saw when I opened my eyes was just a puddle of water stretching to the horizon.

“When the fight ends…”

The girl standing before the puddle spoke to me.

“After the fight ends, I would take time to immerse myself in the lake near the battlefield, armor and all. Only then could I remove the filth on my sword and armor.”

Despite having the same voice as the girl who was wailing earlier.

In an infinitely cold and blunt voice.

“…Pailoi?”

“Hello, Dad.”

The girl who had grown dramatically compared to last night’s dream…

No, the child soldier was greeting me there.

“I wanted to be a cute daughter in front of Dad, but my memories returned much faster than I thought.”

Someone who might one day become a hero, but whose beginning was nothing more than a girl abandoned in an era of war.

“…I’m sorry, truly.”

With fragments of the living hell we had passed through, torn off as they were.