episode_0045

“I’m back…!”

Aion was finally able to return home around dusk.

After finishing work, he ran home without resting, but the village and Aion’s house were too far apart.

When he got home, he collapsed in the hallway, exhausted like a runner who has just finished a marathon.

“Haa…!Haa…!”

He lay in the hallway, panting heavily.

The girls who were playing in the living room were greatly surprised when they heard the noise made by Aion and came out of the living room to see Aion collapsed in the hallway.

“Ah…sir…!”

They looked at Aion, who was breathing heavily, and shouted in confusion.

He was left panting on the floor, unable to respond to their actions.

And seeing Aion like that, Dana handed Aion a cup filled with cold water.

Only then did Aion feel that he was alive.

***

“Brother….”

Ailee looked at the numerous corpses of monsters piled up in front of the village and muttered quietly.

Ailee was able to evacuate safely with her family thanks to Aion’s quick judgment of the situation.

She and her family were fleeing to a nearby village to escape the monsters. Following the testimony of the knights who joined them along the way, they returned to the village.

As she returned to the village, she was delighted at the thought of meeting Aion once again, but when she returned to the village, he was already gone.

According to the testimonies of the knights, he fought a bloody battle with what appeared to be hundreds of monsters in order to heal the injured knights with an unknown power and then evacuate them.

No one knew how the fight ended.

All the monsters that were fighting with him died on the spot.

No one knew whether he was alive or dead, as neither his body nor any dismembered body parts were found there.

He showed up to protect the village and helped us without any cost.

Ailee looked at the corpses of the monsters that had formed the mountain, and at the same time thought back to the brief moments she had spent with them.

When I first met him, I thought he was a suspicious person or a thief.

He was going around here and there in the village as if he was investigating the town, and Ailee, who saw Aion like that, followed him around, worried that he might hurt someone.

I had never seen his face before, so he was an outsider and not a villager.

As she was observing him like that, she eventually spoke to the man.

The man was greatly embarrassed when Ailee spoke to him.

Such behavior from a man only heightened her sense of vigilance.

However, her wariness greatly subsided after he bought her chicken skewers, and Ailee thought while eating the chicken skewers the man had bought her.

‘Is he a good person?’

At least in her life, the people who gave her food were generally good people, so she gradually lost her wariness toward men.

The man asked himself several questions.

Do monsters appear often? What is life like here?

He kept asking questions about the town, and Ailee answered his questions honestly to the best of her knowledge.

From the short conversation I had with him, he didn’t seem like a bad person, like a thief.

While talking to him like that, I found out that he was an adventurer.

And Ailee, who didn’t know it, became more interested in talking to men than ever before.

Ailee had always admired adventurers and knights, and she wanted to hear their stories, but since this was a town where adventurers rarely came, this was the first time she had actually seen and talked to them.

She fantasized about being an adventurer, asking him questions she had always been curious about.

He also answered her questions sincerely, and while she was talking with the man for a long time.

The knight, whose whole body was stained with blood, shouted.

A monster has appeared.

Originally, this village had a higher frequency of monster appearances than other villages, but it had managed to block them well. However, the knight’s body was covered in what looked like blood, and more than anything, the pupils of the knight who had shouted that a monster had appeared were trembling violently as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have seen.

The odd appearance of the article made even young Ailee realize that something was seriously wrong.

While I was talking like that, the man said.

“Go to your parents right now and evacuate. I have a bad feeling about this.”

He must have sensed something bad too, so he made her run away.

She was worried about him as she remembered the short moments she had spent with him, but he smiled and said.

“Thank you for your concern. But I have to go. Protecting people is what adventurers are for, right?”

The man spoke while carefully brushing Ailee’s hair.

Before leaving, she set off on her escape journey, promising to meet the man again.

But when I returned to the village again, he was gone.

She remembered all the things she had done with him and made a promise.

He also wants to become an adventurer like him.

I will stand beside him as an adventurer who protects people.

Of course, she had no way of knowing whether he was alive or not, but she could be sure.

He will definitely survive.

That’s why Ailee clenched her fists, looking forward to the day she would meet him again.

She returned home where her family was waiting for her.

***

“Hmm…”

Meanwhile, Aion was lost in thought as he looked at the flesh and hide of the monsters he had taken out of the item box.

It was late in the morning. They should have been asleep and he should have been asleep too, but for some reason he couldn’t fall asleep easily.

The reason was because of the monster that invaded the village.

Although it was unlikely, he started observing them in the evening when they were all asleep, thinking that Hine might eat the meat of a monster like last time.

He groaned as he looked at the flesh and hide of the monster on the desk.

He couldn’t figure out why the monsters had changed like that.

Before they went to sleep, I secretly called Haru and showed her the things I had collected from the monsters.

She just tilted her head and made a motion as if she didn’t know what was going on.

“It smells familiar, but I don’t know what it is.”

One day, after looking at the flesh and leather for a while, he said that and was unable to get the information he wanted.

But I was able to find some clues.

As Aion had expected, Haru seemed to be unfamiliar with this, and the monsters’ changed appearance also meant that those who created her were related to those who worshipped the demon Amito.

“It’s not as easy as I thought.”

But he was not satisfied, as he had no conclusive evidence.

Since he didn’t even know where their hideout was, he could only feel frustrated in this situation.

From the moment he started to get seriously involved in the work, things didn’t go as planned.

The past has changed to the point where it is no longer strange for anything to happen.

He was staring at the monster’s flesh without saying a word.

He looked at flesh and leather, relying on the moonlight streaming in through the window.

As soon as I touched it with my hand to examine it closely, a change occurred.

As he absentmindedly touched the monster’s flesh, his hand, which was holding the goddess’s holy relic, began to glow, and soon a holy light filled his room.

As the room, which had been dark for a moment, became brighter, he reflexively closed his eyes, and when he opened them again.

Everything that entered my eyes was white.

Until just a moment ago, he had been looking at the flesh and skin he had collected from the monsters in the room, but when he opened his eyes again, the sky, the ground, and everything else were white.

Aion was speechless when he saw this.

For an ordinary person, if they were suddenly transported to a place they had never seen before, they would be very surprised or deny it as reality.

Aion, who was well aware of this phenomenon, did not do so.

He just walked forward silently along the path before his eyes without saying a word.

After walking like that for a while, he was able to reach the end of the road.

At the end of the road was a huge door whose end was invisible.

When Aion saw this, he pushed the huge door with all his might and went inside.

And he said as he looked at the unknown being before his eyes.

“Why did you call me?”

He spoke to the unknown being before him in a sharp voice.

At Aion’s words, the unknown being that had been silently looking at him opened its holy mouth.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

The being standing in front of Aion spoke softly.

At those words, Aion clenched his fist as if he was about to throw a punch.

The being standing in front of him is.

The goddess he had so desperately wanted to meet. The goddess of sorrow.