48 . School Reopens (4)
If you head south along the great river that cuts through the Hawol Plains, you come to the settlements of the Black Cat Tribe and the Yuwa Tribe.
Since ancient times, the frog-like Yuwa Tribe and the Black Cat Tribe had frequently clashed over the waterside lands, so the two races had always lived as bitter enemies……
but the explorer Kyla knew one tremendous secret that existed between those two tribes.
That secret was this.
“Kihyaaa, this is exactly the stuff!”
If you mixed the musk coffee cultivated by the Black Cat Tribe with the black droplets cultivated by the Yuwa Tribe and brewed alcohol from them, you got an absolutely incredible vodka.
“What a strange human.”
“Does that even taste good?”
The Black Cat Tribe villagers clicked their tongues as they watched Kyla drinking Musk Droplet Liquor from broad daylight, having already laid out a whole little drinking spread on the ground.
“Khuu, to not understand this flavor. What a pity, my friends.”
A wanderer.
Or a drifter.
Or an explorer.
Or a homeless person.
Or…… a time traveler.
She loved living as someone who roamed the world without settling anywhere, but for certain reasons, she had once been bound to the Karakorn Mountains and unable to leave for a long time.
It had already been decades since she had last been able to drink the liquor of foreign lands.
Partway through, thanks to meeting girls with a special destiny, she had managed to successfully finish her “business” in Karakorn, and so she emerged back into the world and returned to her days of wandering the Hawol Plains and drinking whatever alcohol she could get her hands on.
The Hawol Plains were packed unusually densely with the settlements of many different races, and because so many drinking cultures had developed there, one could taste as many kinds of liquor as there were races.
That was why she loved this place so much.
‘Hmm. It feels a little different from the last time I came here.’
For some reason, it felt as though the cultures of the various races had almost been unified into one.
As though some powerful ruler had appeared and bound them all together into a single group……
though to be honest, that sort of thing didn’t matter much to her.
“As long as the booze tastes good, that’s all that matters!”
After returning to Hawol, Kyla roamed from place to place and spent her nights drinking one strong liquor after another.
The places she mainly sought out were ones famous for their alcohol, or else places where good liquor could be brewed.
With her bronze skin and her warm, easygoing appearance, she was the sort who spoke first to anyone and casually tossed out cheerful jokes, so she easily got along with all kinds of non-human races wherever she went.
That was Kyla’s personal secret to drinking alcohol in foreign places without spending even a single coin.
And so, after about a week had passed—
“Kuheoh…… eurgh?”
That day too, after predictably blacking out drunk, Kyla woke up on the street, wiped the drool soaking her cheek, and pushed herself up.
“Urgh, what a hangover.”
Pain like someone repeatedly hammering at her skull.
While gagging and struggling to lift herself up, Kyla realized that this was a very unfamiliar place.
And she didn’t like it.
Kyla possessed Eyes That See the Past, meaning she could always see, all at once, the history that had occurred in the past.
Because of that, she tended to avoid places where terrible incidents had once occurred long ago.
On battlefields, the scenes of countless people dying unfolded vividly before her eyes, and in places where disasters had occurred, the screams of people crying out in agony would echo around her.
No one would be able to endure that while fully sober.
“……Tch. I’m out of booze too.”
No matter how badly the hangover twisted her insides, she had wanted to get drunk again as soon as possible and return to that hazy state.
Struggling to stand, she turned her gaze to her surroundings.
This was a cold ruin where not the slightest sign of human life could be felt.
Even if she had been drunk, how on earth had she ended up here?
This city had fallen roughly half a year ago.
Up until then, it had been a lively city filled with blooming laughter.
Until, one day, all at once,
the Mana Power Plant collapsed.
The moment the power facility, which had supplied the city with mana as energy, exploded, that scene vividly engraved itself into Kyla’s eyes.
Even if she did not want to see it.
Even if she turned her gaze away.
Even if she shut her eyes.
The afterimage of the past kept tormenting her.
“……Haah.”
Collapsing back down where she stood, Kyla frowned deeply at the nauseating pounding in her head.
‘The concentration of mana crystals in the air is dense…… Has it been contaminated by mana radiation?’
Mana only gave off life-giving energy to all living things when it existed in an intangible state.
But the moment it crystallized, it instantly transformed into deathly waves that stole life away.
‘It looks like fifty years must have passed……
and the concentration is still this bad.’
An ordinary human might have collapsed simply from entering the place, vomiting blood from every opening in their body due to mana poisoning.
If it was this bad now, how horrific must the scene have been back then?
Kyla walked quickly through the ruins.
She no longer wanted to remain in a place like this that ruined the taste of alcohol.
But then,
after seeing the side profile of someone blocking her path, she had no choice but to stop.
A man with gray hair tied into a ponytail stood there, looking out over the ruins with a detached gaze.
“It was a horrific sight.”
Instinctively, Kyla drew a staff from her arms and aimed it at him.
From the tip of her staff, silver chains spilled down with a clatter, and a pocket watch swung from side to side.
The gray-haired man turned that empty gaze toward Kyla.
“A fragment of Silver Age November……. You still waste your time in pointless ways.”
His voice was heavy and cold, and his tone held no soul.
Meeting that gray gaze, Kyla swallowed dryly.
The pain of the hangover had long since been blown away.
“Hah, time’s always on my side. Would one of the Twelve Divine Months really have a reason to pay a visit to a mere fragment like me?”
Grey Sky October.
That man, who could manipulate the spaces of the world—was he not perhaps the most alien existence in this world?
Fear began to creep up within her, but Kyla held firm and glared back at him.
“I heard you left Aether World. So what brought you back? Hmm? Miss the mages after all this time?”
“……Fragment of Silver Age November.”
“How about just calling me Kyla?”
“Yes. Kyla.”
With his gray eyes, he gazed at Kyla—
or rather, somewhere beyond her.
“What scene are you seeing here now?”
“What……?”
Kyla frowned.
That man knew her ability.
So what was his intention in asking something like that anyway?
“Just…… a horrible scene.”
“You are looking at the tragedy from fifty years ago.”
“What else would there even be to see?”
Kyla replied with deliberate irritation, and Grey Sky October lowered his voice and answered as though reciting an incantation.
“The tragedy from fifty years ago is not the only past. The moment you stumbled drunkenly into this place last night is also the past, and so too is the moment a single weed struggles to root itself through the cracks in these ruins.”
“You sure do like twisting simple things into circles when you talk.”
“One hundred years ago.”
Kyla’s eyebrows twitched.
Beyond the tragedy from fifty years ago, had something happened here a hundred years ago too?
Just as she tried to look upon the scenery from that time—
“Two hundred years ago.”
“Five hundred years ago, and one thousand years ago.”
Grey Sky October stared as though piercing straight through Kyla’s silver eyes.
“The limit of the past you can see ends exactly there.”
“Uh……”
That was true.
Come to think of it, ever since she inherited the Eyes That See the Past from Silver Age November, she had never once tried to look back beyond one thousand years.
Because
it had been impossible.
But unwilling to be cowed before Grey Sky October, Kyla bit down hard and shouted,
“Isn’t that obvious? That’s the day the Twelve Divine Months were born!”
“No. It is not obvious. Even though you can handle time, why should there be such a limit…… Have you never once questioned that?”
No.
She had never even felt happy having this ability in the first place, so she had never thought deeply about it.
“That sort of thing doesn’t really matter.”
“It does matter. Fragment…… more precisely, the fact that the exact limit of the past that the existence known as Silver Age November can peer into is precisely nine hundred ninety years ago.”
“Nine hundred…… ninety years……?”
“Yes.”
It was an exact number.
In reality, the limit of the past Kyla could see was indeed 990 years.
But then……
why exactly 990 years, rather than one thousand?
“What exactly are you trying to say……?”
As he kept engraving thoughts into her head that she had never wanted to know in the first place, it was beginning to torment her.
She didn’t need to know such things.
It was enough for her to drink every day and find her own happiness.
“Fate has begun to cycle once more. You too should return to your proper place.”
“……You do realize that saying that to me is basically the same thing as telling me to die, right?”
“Death is not the end.”
“What a joke. Easy for you to say when it’s not your own death.”
“You need to return to your place at the proper time.”
Suddenly, the atmosphere around Grey Sky October changed completely. The blue, sunny sky and clouds stained themselves entirely gray, and Kyla’s breath caught in her throat.
“Khk……!”
“And yet this time…… you refuse to submit to fate.”
Grey Sky October tilted his head as he approached Kyla, as though her actions genuinely displeased him—or perhaps as though he simply could not understand them.
“What was it that moved you so much?”
“Wh-what are……!”
He looked up at the sky, then realized that he had made a mistake and withdrew the grayness.
The weather instantly turned clear again, but by then Kyla was already far from normal.
“No matter. It is fortunate indeed that Silver Age November is such a coward. It divided even its own memories into fragments and hid them away so thoroughly that they could not be found.”
“Cough, khk!”
The moment Grey Sky October withdrew his power, Kyla collapsed powerlessly to the ground and dropped to her knees, coughing.
Tears welled in her eyes, and her whole body trembled violently.
It was beyond mere fear.
This was……
the emotion of prey that had just looked death in the face.
‘Ah, so this is the end.’
Kyla closed her eyes.
She had only just finally been freed from the Karakorn Mountains and thought she would at last be able to travel freely.
She had never imagined she would be stopped here like this.
“Return to your place, and do what it is that you must do.”
When Grey Sky October clenched empty air in his hand, Kyla’s body was sucked beyond the other side of space and vanished.
Swoosh!!
He stood for a while, staring at the place where she had disappeared, then swallowed the rest of his words.
“……Just as it always has been.”
Step.
Grey Sky October turned and slowly crossed through the ruins.
Because of that foolish Silver Age November, he had always suffered like this.
And yet, he had always failed.
Even so, though he knew he would fail, Grey Sky October repeated the exact same attempt once again this time.
Because that was the duty and mission given to him.
Having perfectly finished what he needed to do here, Grey Sky October crossed to the far side of space and thought to himself:
He had returned the fragment of Silver Age November to its original place, so now all that remained was for Silver Age November to go there and absorb it in accordance with fate.
……However, he did not know.
“Mmm, playing baduk alone really isn’t any fun.”
That Silver Age November was moving in a way completely unlike anything Grey Sky October expected.
No, to be more precise—
“I suppose I should go play poker instead.”
Grey Sky October could not even begin to imagine that Silver Age November was doing absolutely nothing at all.
Fate was twisting.
Because of some tiny existence, bit by bit, slowly—
and yet…… drastically.
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
