Going Back 10,000 Years (2)

“Ugh, graaah…”

“I don’t know what circumstances there are, but if you’re trying to protect what’s inside there, I have no choice. In any case, that thing must be destroyed.”

Although his momentum and madness were a bit frightening, Kai was ultimately subdued by me. Since he was too quick to be sucked into the ground, making the ground itself rise up was the right answer.

The ground that exploded, vibrating like a wave, wrapped around his entire body as he jumped, and then solidified, rendering him completely immobile.

“Even at this moment, there were kids who believed in you and were trying to find you. At least you shouldn’t betray those kids.”

“Kuh, betrayal, you say?”

When I looked up at him and spoke, he gritted his teeth despite his suffering.

“Yes, clearly it was my own choice to follow that voice and choose this path. But who dares to use the word betrayal on me? This is revenge, I tell you. Revenge against the true traitors…!”

He began to spill out his story with flashing eyes. In the process, the identity of something inside that cave I was curious about also began to be revealed gradually.

“I never cursed the fact that I was a goblin my whole life. No matter what happened to me, I thought of it as karma I had to bear and lived a life of even greater dedication so that there would be no gossip behind my back.”

The root of all problems started with his birth as a goblin. As Ian said, he was a goblin but was a fairly skilled adventurer and an ordinary person with affection for his comrades.

It was the same when he retired from adventurer life and his comrades settled in their hometowns to start ordinary lives.

Although he couldn’t live mixed in with human villages, because he had skills, living alone in the forest wasn’t a problem.

“I wanted to… maintain even that much. In the end, even after decades of trying to find meaning for myself, I couldn’t let go of my childish desire to become human.”

“Was that why you associated with your comrade’s child and their friends?”

“Even that was satisfying. Born as a goblin treated as a magical beast, that must have been my limit! But! Those bastards couldn’t even leave that alone. They say I killed Dune? That I betrayed him?!”

The reason for his anger wasn’t harm to himself.

It was recently that the low-quality group in the village noticed his existence secretly living near the village. Dune, a villager and comrade who took care of him, was blackmailed by them using Kai’s existence.

‘What a mess.’

I sighed and lowered my head.

Of course, Dune tried to protect Kai and got into a dispute with them. Dune being killed in front of Kai’s eyes happened in that process.

“If only this old and worn-out body had a bit more strength. If I had more power from the beginning, this would never have happened.”

It was then that he, in despair and anger, heard the voice. The temptation of darkness, offering to give him power to take revenge and rampage in this world.

The curse of corruption overtook his body, and Kai, angry and despairing, didn’t push away the curse but accepted it himself.

“This world was wrong from its very structure to begin with. Why has it become like this? Why is the path one must walk determined from birth? Why are there such obstacles when one tries to deviate from that path?”

In his anger, he poured out the resentment in his heart. In fact, whatever he said to me, I had no obligation to listen as a third party, but I flinched a little when I heard him lamenting about the structure of the world.

This world became a completely different, new world from the past 10,000 years ago, after the Tower collapsed.

As someone who was there at that moment, I couldn’t help but be concerned.

“Is that true?”

And then, a presence I hadn’t paid attention to while talking with Kai appeared quietly from behind.

“I-Ian…! Why are you here!”

Kai’s eyes widened in surprise.

At the same time, I reflexively glanced at the earth spirits. The earth spirits, who made excuses that they didn’t particularly inform me because Ian seemed too harmless, scratched their heads and then quietly hid in the ground.

“Did Father really…”

“You’re very brave, aren’t you? Do you think the rampaging goblins will recognize you?”

I clicked my tongue, looking at Ian whose voice was trembling, probably from shock. I had felt it from the beginning when they were trying to go to the goblin’s den by themselves, but he was particularly bold.

“I had no choice, Ian. I didn’t want you to come to hate your foolish kinsmen. Because I know how painful that is. I wanted to bear the revenge and karma myself.”

He explained the situation to Ian in a choked voice, as if regretful. The fact that he tried to bear everything alone without telling the truth to Ian, the child of his beloved comrade, could be seen as evidence that he wasn’t completely in a rampaging state yet.

“But you should have told me! Taking revenge like this, even you, uncle!”

But Ian got angry in return. He meant that he couldn’t lose even the last family he had left in this way.

As if those words struck strongly, Kai’s mouth gaped open and he was at a loss for words. Come to think of it, even I thought Kai’s method was too extreme, even if it was for revenge.

It seemed he had already finished his revenge on the main culprits, but now his anger was directed at all humans.

“I, I just… ugh, aaaargh!”

As if realizing this fact, black flames burned more fiercely on his confused body, and he screamed as if in pain.

That intensifying unpleasant energy is a power antithetical to me just by its existence. The curse is eating away at him as he falls into confusion.

“I understand the circumstances, but I can’t leave the curse alone any longer. Otherwise, you’ll be completely devoured and lose yourself. If that happens, you’ll end up killing this child with your own hands. You should have touched what you should have touched.”

“N-No… I don’t know who you are, but don’t approach that. It will surely swallow even you!”

When I pointed to the cave, Kai shouted painfully. He was right that there was something inside the cave that was the cause of the curse, and he thought that I couldn’t handle it.

However, just as Kai threw himself into the curse for the value of revenge, I too couldn’t ignore the calls of the spirits now.

“I’ll be better than you, won’t I?”

I smirked and leaped up, instantly standing on top of the stone pillar he was tied to. He, who was fighting against the curse trying to completely devour him, looked at me with shaking eyes.

“This is impossible. The curse of corruption is a calamity left in this world. There’s no way to escape it. Rather, kill me now. Before I go even more mad!”

“We’ll know if we try.”

I stretched out my hand and grasped his face as he shook his head. With the werewolf, I was too surprised to use it properly, but this time will be different.

* * *

‘What on earth is this elf girl?’

Even asking who she was would be inappropriate. Literally, asking ‘what’ she was would be more correct.

As Isilia approached him, her oversized blouse fluttering, and rolled up her fluttering sleeve to place her hand firmly on his face, Kai intuitively sensed something from the mysteriousness emanating from her.

Perhaps this mysterious girl might really turn the impossible into possible.

And that intuition was right on the mark. As she began to pour her power into him, the curse that had been struggling to devour his body began to be pushed back and purified.

‘It’s exactly the same as artifact restoration.’

Isilia gritted her teeth and drove out the curse to the end, even as her strength was rapidly draining. The calamity that had ruled this world for 10,000 years was devoured like prey meeting its natural enemy by the power containing the purity of that era.

“I, I’m alright now.”

When the flashing light completely purified the sticky curse, Kai spoke in a trembling voice as she gasped for breath, sweating profusely.

His manner of speech had already changed. After all, the being who brought about this miracle of restoring his cursed mind to clarity couldn’t possibly be an ordinary existence.

“It’s not over yet.”

Isilia wiped away her flowing sweat and smirked as she withdrew her hand.

Where she pointed after demolishing the ground and releasing Kai’s restraints, the cave that was still emitting that eerie energy was waiting for them with its black maw open.

“You guide us. You should clean up at the end, after all.”

“Ah, understood. This way.”

“We should take that kid too. We don’t know what might happen if we leave him alone here.”

After instructing him to guide them inside the cave, Isilia snorted at Ian, who was blankly watching this scene.

Thanks to this, Isilia, Kai, and Ian, these three, hurriedly rushed into the cave.

“…What on earth did I just see?”

And right after that, someone who had confused even the earth spirits’ detection with an invisibility spell set foot in this place blankly.

Renia, holding a staff in one hand and a gun in the other, had eyes as if entranced by something she had seen while rushing here.