Book 19 Chapter 20

Lambard Workshop,

Old Aristocrat Extermination War (1)

“Come on, Pipi! Come here!”

Fride said, even clapping her hands, but Pipi just tilted her head and remained unmoving!

“W-what is it…… Pipi, you, surely you don’t mean you prefer them young? You don’t know anything. Human women are like wine. The more they mature, the more valuable they become.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, Pipi doesn’t know such things. Corn, corn, corn.”

“To enchant my Pipi like this! What is your true identity, you jerk!”

Then Tureina placed a hand on her forehead and said solemnly.

“I am, [the strongest]….”

For a moment, Fride tilted her head to the left. She tilted it to the right again, then looked at Kies first.

[┐(ㅋㅅㅋ)┌]

As soon as Kies, who had already seen that countless times during the retreat, showed such a reaction with his white spear-bow, Fride grabbed me by the collar.

“No, you crazy lunatic bastard! You said you’d teach magic, but in the past few days, what kind of madman’s antics have you been teaching?!”

“No, I’m wronged too.”

“What’s so unfair, you lowlife! You spout such lines every day, so of course, they watch and learn from you.”

It was incredibly unfair.

Even though I always warned Tureina never to imitate my way of speaking, that little kid completely ignored it.

At the same time, I felt envy.

In my childhood, [the strongest magician] was not by my side.

But Tureina had [the strongest Archmage] herself. She could watch and learn anything.

“Are you Lin? What a complete whippersnapper! If you kneel at my feet and wish for a blessing, I can specially pray for you!”

I suppose that was probably the first time I properly interacted with Shimian, the wandering shaman.

“What are you talking about. Aren’t you more of a brat?”

But why does this face look familiar?

Where have I seen these guys before.

Then the spearman standing behind them stepped forward, making a shocked expression.

“A-a brat?! You rude fellow! This person is a shaman who succeeds Lady Elsara, the youngest shaman! Though called second-rank, his potential and talent will be even greater than Lady Elsara’s!”

“Why is the sentence speculative?”

“Well… it hasn’t been proven yet. We fairies, the first descendants who observe the law, don’t lie unlike humans.”

Then the shaman looked like he was about to cry! The spearman took out a bunch of toys and began to console the shaman.

“……!”

Seeing that, Tureina suddenly rummaged through her pocket and pulled out a doll from who knows where.

And like that spearman, she started ventriloquizing with the doll.

“Hey, don’t do it, okay? Stop it. Don’t imitate just anything.”

Anyway, the reunion in the pleasure city of <Lambard> was like that.

Thus, bustling with trivial matters, and heartwarming…

“Oh, right. Rista asked me to call her when you arrived.”

Fride, whom I met again, didn’t particularly object to Tureina’s companionship, just as Kies hadn’t. For people like us, it’s possible to gauge an opponent’s stature by their mere presence.

“Where is that regionally discriminatory hero now?”

Fride pointed her thumb towards the city’s summit.

The summit should normally be hazy due to the distance, yet the outline of the ‘Hall of Heroes,’ which bestowed the epithet ‘City of Heroes’ upon this place, was strangely distinct.

Lin let out a gasp of fright, exclaiming “Eek.”

“Why there of all places….”

“She probably has a lot to think about or pray for. She hasn’t come out of there all day. It’s not strange. That place is where the statues of the Eldia Heroes, the true heroes, are, so it’s like a sacred place for the Faequeriers.”

Fride’s explanation didn’t register at all, and I just kept sighing deeply.

“Damn, when am I ever going to get up there?”

The pleasure city of <Lambard>, said to have been built by <The Ones Who Came>, is a spiral and terraced fortress city.

It’s spiral because stone walls wrap around the artificially piled-up mountain in several layers, reaching the city built on its summit.

It’s terraced because houses and markets are built even between those stone walls.

This ingenious method provided an unusual advantage in fortress defense.

Even if one of the gates at the base of the mountain is breached, the enemy would have to endure hours of bombardment from the stone walls to ascend to the city.

The problem was having to climb all the way to that summit. For reference, it’s really damn far.

“Tureina, you stay here and help Fride. I have to go because Rista called me.”

“?”

“Why are you looking at me like that, want to die? Listen to me.”

Fride, covered in blood, had been leading witches in rescue efforts at the West Gate, where casualties were concentrated, and upon hearing that Kies and I had returned, she dragged her busy and tired body out to greet us.

Fride was always like that.

Normally, she would whine about trivial things, but when pushed to the brink of exhaustion by serious problems, she wouldn’t even show a hint of difficulty.

“Sval, you stay here too. You’re a burden, so taking you would only make it harder.”

Though I said that… I had judged that Sval’s cold ability would be a great help to the wounded suffering from high fever.

Fride let out a snicker.

Kies also let out a snicker.

As if they knew all my thoughts, the faces of those lunatics smiling like that were truly detestable, so I quickly left the spot.

Several hours passed like that…

As I walked, reading a grimoire, the slope eventually ended, and the entrance to the Hall of Heroes greeted me, grand and magnificent.

“Lin.”

I reunited with Rista Alter Schurpain deep inside that hall.

“Do you know? This <Lambard> is a city built to completely seal away one of the Lizard Lord’s top henchmen, the Duke of Gluttony (暴食公).”

The statue of the Eldia Hero…

Eldia Alma (01) Alkaios radiated majesty, holding two holy swords aloft.

Eldia Vete (02) Karduel, whose back was against his, in the pose of drawing the string of a bow-sword type holy sword, somehow seemed closer to the dignity of a sage than a warrior.

“The <Lambard> area is a plain, right? The reason only this part is high is because this terrain itself is part of the Duke of Gluttony’s physical body.”

“How on earth did they defeat such a thing?”

“So the Eldia Heroes were supposedly swallowed on purpose. To get inside the body! If it can’t be done from outside, then what about from inside? That kind of strategy!”

The bewilderingly ignorant ideas of those who wielded swords seemed to transcend eras.

The reason I couldn’t utter those words was because of Rista’s expression.

Rista’s eyes, which kept gazing at the statue except for the brief moment we reunited, were so profoundly serious.

“Sometimes, you know? I have these thoughts. Didn’t these heroes also have dreams or ambitions? Things they wanted to do, or loved ones…”

“?”

“The reason such things weren’t recorded is probably because the Eldia Heroes laid down all of that. They bore their mission and advanced to the end of their calling.”

As Rista carefully placed her hand on the base of the statue, she suddenly, slowly lowered her gaze.

“I, too, must do the same, I suppose. Even if I’m a fake… I am a hero, just like them.”

According to records from the Age of Myths, Eldia Vete (02) Karduel fell in battle during the Time Lord extermination war, and Eldia Alma (01) Alkaios died after assisting <The Ones Who Came> until the final Spider Lord extermination war.

Was that why.

The reason Rista’s words ‘must do the same’ sounded exactly like ‘must die the same.’

“Doesn’t it not necessarily have to be exactly the same?”

And so those words felt as if an uncrossable wall was being built, separating me and Rista…

So if not now,

Then if not this moment.

Was it because I had a premonition that I wouldn’t be able to reach out to Rista beyond that intangible wall? The reason I said that was.

“No, it must be the same. Wait, wait, wait! Could you please not say anything more than that? I’ll be swayed.”

Rista said that with a sad smile, but I had no intention of backing down either.

“My dream is to be [the strongest Archmage], but I have no intention of dying young like Zernix.”

“!”

“And Julak Keppel was an Archmage officially recognized as [the strongest Archmage] in magic history, but he lived a full life until he was old and then died, didn’t he? That’s what I intend to do.”

Only then could I repay Dean Atlante.

To you.

Who took me in when I had nothing, and gave me light and hope.

“Isn’t it the same for Rista? You don’t necessarily have to die. If only you can complete that mission or whatever it is without dying.”

Rista suddenly stared blankly at me with wide-open eyes, those eyes dyed golden by the dragon’s soul.

Her gaze, rotated several times.

It briefly went to the ceiling, then to her feet, then back to the hero’s statue… then suddenly it brushed past me and she ran out.

“?”

I had to retrace my steps to see if I had made a mistake.

I thought I would have to directly ask what my mistake was and the meaning of Rista’s reaction someday.

The day I could ask that never came, forever.

* * *

Rista Alter Schurpain ran.

Past the Hall of Heroes, that is, past the ‘end of her mission’ that would surely come to her too, she jumped down onto the stone walls, and ran north, and further north.

Her body, which should not have been out of breath from just this much, was breathless. Her lungs ached, and the pulsing breath beneath her chin was harsh.

‘North…’

Rista, having reached the northern end of the fortress wall, panted as she gazed at the northern horizon.

To the north, the visibility was somewhat clear. That clear visibility was the trace of her journey with her hero party companions.

Every mundane moment, nestled between the great battles to be recorded in history, known and remembered only by her and her companions, was a crevice created by the light of memory.

‘Fride’s cigarette smoke, Kies’s drunken ramblings, Lin’s grumbling… all of that…’

As it was a hero party journey, it was impossible to engrave traces of daily life everywhere, but Rista sometimes, no, often dreamed such dreams.

If only…

If they hadn’t met as a hero party, they could have traveled together to many more places, to far greater distances, engraving endless memories across the world to an extent impossible to remember fully.

‘I thought I had to give up all, all of those dreams.’

If, she didn’t die.

Even at the end of her mission, if there was still strength in her body.

‘A year, no, even half a year would be fine. If I could save just a little time…’

When everyone, the world, reality told me to give up my dreams, Lin… you tell me to dream that dream again.

Again, one more time…

Let’s travel beyond that flower garden on that day when dawn blossomed and twilight fell…

‘You and I, and everyone together…’